Any Means Necessary by Jack Mars

 


















This was a heart stopping thriller that kept me riveted from the first page.  It is very much like a Brad Thor or Vince Flynn book with action, action, action!  I have to admit that I just finished the book and my pulse is still elevated.

Luke Stone is a leader of the SRT (special response team) of the FBI and as the book begins, he has just fallen asleep at 2 am when he gets a call from his boss.  There has been a theft of radioactive materials from a hospital in New York, apparently by Muslim radicals that want to make a dirty bomb.  Luke springs into action and before he is done, the white house explodes, there is a coup d'tat of the president, and nuclear war with Russia looms.  It seems pretty ambitious for one novel to pull all of this off, but Mars does so nicely.

The only thing that I didn't like about this novel was the ending, which seemed to me to be premature and unsatisfying.  Not all the loose ends are tied up at the end, and instead the novel bleeds over to the second book in the series, 'Oath of Office.'  This is okay is you already have the second book so you can read on, but I was only going to read the first, so I don't get to find out how things turn out.  Still, 'Any Means Necessary' is a good read.  Highly recommended.  5/5 stars.