read: Shadow Tyrants (4 stars)

Shadow Tyrants by Clive Cussler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The crew of the Oregon have so much to do in this story that they are frequently split into two or even three separate teams. The foes are bigger and more ancient and the stakes are more global than ever. There's arguably too much going on for a single book. I couldn't put it down until the last crisis was averted.

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read: House Divided (3 stars)

House Divided by Mike Lawson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As with the other books I've read in this series, Joe DeMarco is not so much a hero as a stubborn, sonofabitch that gets caught up in other people's messes. In this one, a distant cousin is gunned down at the Iwo Jima Memorial and he doesn't quite buy the FBI's story about how things went down - a drug deal gone bad. He starts poking around and draws the attention of two factions of the Defense Department that are both involved in his cousin's death. Most of the story involves the characters in the NSA and Pentagon. Joe is just along for the ride. Again.

After a long, slow build up (Mike Lawson has a very relaxed writing style), the pace picked up about 2/3 of the way through the book. So did my interest and I hung on to the end. For a political suspense story, I feel like that first 2/3 should have been compressed to about half its length. Or stuffed with more action. It's mostly just talk and analysis.

I give it three stars for being a solid, though not sizzling, suspense story.

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