This one didn’t work for me. Joseph Badal’s Evil Deeds is supposed to be “based on true events.” Those true events must be the kind that are stranger than fiction, because the story failed to convince in my case.

The hero is Bob Danforth, who starts the story in 1971 as a young, married U.S. Army officer in Athens. One day while he’s at work, his little boy Michael is kidnapped by a gang of gypsies, in the pay of a communist government. This begins a long-standing (and fairly unconvincing) conflict between the Danforths and the kidnappers. They’re all thrown together again in the wake of a second kidnapping years later, the middle-aged Danforth now being a CIA operative.

The major problem with this book was too many coincidences. Instead of setting up credible plot points, author Badal just does whatever he likes to up the stakes, ignoring logic or probability. The many reversals seemed arbitrary to me, and I felt manipulated as a reader.

Badal has also not mastered his English. He uses words wrong (“hoard” for “horde,” for instance), and at one point describes the same character two different ways (I suspect he just forgot he’d used the name already).

Also, the book was too long.

I don’t give Evil Deeds high marks. Your mileage may vary. Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.