Tag Archives: Blake Banner

Fiction, Reviews

‘An Ace and a Pair,’ by Blake Banner

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He blinked, but it was probably just his time for blinking that month.

Having discovered the pleasures of reading Blake Banner, and having exhausted the available books in his Cobra series, I moved on to his Dead Cold Mystery books, about a pair of police detective partners in New York City. An Ace and a Pair was not as much fun as the Cobra books, in my estimation, but entertaining, and with some superior moments.

John Stone is a successful detective with a high case clearance rate. But his superior doesn’t like him. Aside from personal animus, she considers him a dinosaur who ought to retire and make way for younger people. So she assigns him to the Cold Case squad, and partners him with Det. Carmen Dehan, a very attractive (of course) Jewish/Mexican officer with an attitude problem. They mesh immediately, united by their mutual dislike for their superior and a visceral commitment to going to any length to solve cases. There’s some sexual chemistry too, but they both avoid that issue.

The first case John selects is a bizarre one. Ten years ago, a gangster named Nelson Hernandez was found dead at a poker table, along with his chief lieutenants. Each had been shotgunned to death (though Hernandez himself was also grotesquely mutilated), and apparently not one of them moved to defend himself. The chief suspects have solid alibis. Also, the crime made no sense. It didn’t seem to profit anybody.

Stone and Dehan delve into the evidence, which involves a fair amount of travel (even a trip on a gangster’s private plane). Only Stone’s intuitive detective work will enable them to cut through a lot of lies and subterfuges and put some old wrongs right.

Although author Banner employs his trademark technique of jumping quickly into the action, without a lot of preliminary stage setting, the story didn’t take off for me until a little way in. But it grew on me, and I started to care. I had a vague idea what the outcome would be, but a number of impossible problems needed solving first.

I thought I found a couple weak spots. At one point, Stone locates a vital clue through driving around in Texas – which seemed to me an improbable needle-in-the-haystack thing, considering the size of Texas. Also, the author used “begs the question” wrong, which disappointed me. This guy’s better than that.

But it was an enjoyable novel with a satisfying conclusion. Recommended, with the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Einstaat Brief,’ by Blake Banner

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Book three of Blake Banner’s interesting – and modestly impressive – Cobra series is The Einstaat Brief. Once again we follow our hero, “ethical” assassin Harry Bauer, as he fights international evil.

This time out, Harry is facing a situation he never looked for. He’s in love, with a beautiful, red-haired Texas girl. He knows he can’t bring her into the life he’s living, but he figures he’s done enough killing, even in good causes. He’s going to retire, and move with her to a ranch in Wyoming.

Then a team comes to kill him, and they seem to be government agents. Harry’s superiors at Cobra make him an offer he can’t refuse – one last emergency job, and he can retire and they’ll guarantee his and the girl’s safety.

The job is a rush assignment, without adequate preparation time. Harry will have to improvise. He is to infiltrate a luxury resort hotel in Andorra, and assassinate three of the world’s most powerful internet moguls. These three are plotting to inject an algorithm into the world wide web which will give them control of all the world’s markets. But money isn’t their goal. They want to manipulate international economies in order to incite wars in the Third World – to control overpopulation.

Harry manages to get in, but he interprets his instructions freely – he steals the men’s laptops, and kidnaps one of them. But when he gets home, he finds a more dangerous, personal challenge in store.

I am enjoying this series, but this is the last installment available to date. Another is coming in December. Fun reading, with cautions for a high body count and mature language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dying Breath,’ by Blake Banner

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Here we slowed, but not much, and moved, hooting and honking, among cars and motorized rickshaws, in a city that looked like it was built in the twenty-fifth century to be inhabited by people from the fifth century.

Book 2 in Blake Banner’s Cobra series, about elite assassin Harry Bauer, is Dying Breath. It’s as much fun as the first one.

As I read the Cobra books, I’m reminded, in a way, of Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Except that I like Bauer better than Bond (though I’ll admit I’ve only read a couple Bond books). I find James Bond kind of flat as a character. Harry Bauer is an interesting person, and he occasionally hints at opinions I can get behind. On the heroic indestructibility scale, he’s certainly Bond’s equal.

As I mentioned in my last review, Harry Bauer is a former commando, now employed by a super-secret, non-governmental security organization to take out the worst people in the world. His latest assignment seems relatively straightforward – to infiltrate a New York hotel and execute two Chinese scientists who are working on a plague that could become pandemic.

But, as any reader will expect, things don’t go according to plan. The set-up isn’t what Harry expected, and he ends up on a quest that takes him from New York to Casablanca to Bangkok, and which will introduce him to an intriguing femme fatale with lots of deadly secrets.

What any reader of this book will note is that it’s relevant in a very particular way. A moment of recognition comes packed inside at no additional charge. You’ll know what I mean.

I noted one plot problem: Harry makes use of an EMP (Electro-magnetic pulse) machine to knock out electronic systems, but they don’t seem to affect his or his partner’s cars. This is not explained.

Highly recommended as entertainment. Morally problematic in diverse ways.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead of Night,’ by Blake Banner

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The maître d’ sat me next to a table of noisy, overdressed beautiful people; the kind who leave their plastic surgeon’s designer label hanging out of the tucks behind their ears.

Harry Bauer, hero of Blake Banner’s Dead of Night, is an American and an orphan. Somehow his wanderings led him to Britain, where he joined the Special Services. He’s a valued and effective commando, until the night in Afghanistan when he nearly kills a prisoner – an Al Qaida leader who raped, tortured, and murdered an entire village. He gets kicked out of the service, and is soon back home in New York without job prospects.

There is one party willing to hire a guy like him for security work, however, in spite of his hazy military record – a Russian gangster. Harry goes to work for him, but he goes in with a plan – one that will leave a lot of bad guys dead, and Harry considerably richer.

But then he’s detained by some mysterious agents, who escort him to an interview with the head of a secret, international security operation called Cobra. Cobra is not directly sponsored by any government. Its sole purpose is killing – eliminating the worst of the worst, whom the law cannot touch. Harry agrees to join them with little hesitation. Especially because his first target is the same terrorist he had to let go in Afghanistan.

Trouble is, the CIA is holding that monster as an information source, and Harry will have to get through them to get to his target.

Piece of cake.

I occasionally read military action thrillers, but they aren’t my favorite reading fare. But Dead of Night went down real easy with me. I finished it quickly, and had a good time with it. The action never lags, the prose is good (it even made me chuckle occasionally), and Harry comes through as a complex, fully developed character. I hastened to buy the second volume in the series.

I hesitate to recommend this book wholeheartedly, because it’s very bloody, and the body count is high. There’s also the moral question of revenge and whether it’s right to kill just because the victim “needs killing,” so to speak. So the moral ambivalence here is greater than in your average mystery. And, of course there’s always the language and adult themes.

But it sure was a fun read.