Navy Seal | Seattle Book Mama

Blind Fear is the third book in the red hot series by former Navy Seal Brandon Webb and concert cellist turned author, John David Mann. When the two of them collaborate, the pages jump. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House for the invitation to read and review; this thriller is for sale now.

In Cold Fear, the second in the series, our protagonist, Finn, is on the run. He’s a SEAL for the U.S. Navy, an elite combat diver, but corrupt elements have framed him for the slaying of his closest team members, and until he can prove his innocence, Finn needs to be invisible.

He’s good at it.

Now he’s moved on from Iceland to Puerto Rico, and he’s been renting a room from Zacharias, an elderly man that supports himself and his two grandchildren by running a café. He works in the café in exchange for room and board. But now there’s trouble; his two grandchildren haven’t come home. Zacharias would go and look for them, but Zacharias is blind.

There’s nobody better at ferreting out secrets than our man Finn, but doing so puts him at risk. He’s deliberately stayed clear of the city because there are so many military people stationed there. The hinterlands have been safe, and until he can come forward with the proof he needs to save himself, the hinterlands are where he belongs.

But then…what about the children?

Like those before it, this is a taut, tense thriller with multiple massive emergencies weaving in and out of one another. We have Finn’s need to avoid discovery yet, find the missing children; now add a serial killer known as El Rucco who’s left grizzly human remains all over the island and a major hurricane, and friend, this is not your bedtime reading material. Read this one sitting up and with the lights on. Just trust me.

Through all of this, Finn also deals with personal baggage that he tries to ignore, but which comes to him in dreams. He has blocked out a large portion of his early life due to trauma, and he has “questions that had hung over him for thirty years like a kettle of vultures.” This is no soap opera and so we see and hear very little of it, but the snippets that intrude during Finn’s unguarded moments heighten the suspense and the reader’s sense of dread.

There are other praiseworthy attributes I could discuss; as we are introduced to the setting, we have brief but meaty passages that serve to inform us about the injustices that are meted out to this lovely but impoverished nation, and the way that the U.S. government has kept its boot on the necks of the people that live there. But all of this remains secondary to the story itself, and the focus is tightly maintained. The research is meticulous, and the organization is stellar. The development of the protagonist is outstanding; the secondary characters, particularly Zacharias and the older grandchild, Pedro, are visceral and memorable, and I would be delighted to see them again.

Highly recommended to all that enjoy a true thriller.

“Christmas is special here. In Reykjavik, nothing bad ever happens at Christmas.”

Cold Fear is the second in the Finn thriller series. Last year authors Webb and Mann launched the first, Steel Fear, to widespread acclaim, and I loved it, too. My thanks go to Random House Ballantine and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Our protagonist, Finn, is a singular fellow. A Navy Seal (like one of our authors,) he is currently on the run, being sought for questioning regarding war crimes that took place in Yemen. He doesn’t think he is guilty, but he isn’t sure; a large chunk of his memory of that time has vanished, leaving him—and us—slightly off balance. But Finn is a survivor, and now, in Iceland, three members of his own team are here too; he thinks they may have the information that he needs to fill in the gaps he can’t access. There’s another more worrisome person, an assassin, looking for him as well.

Meanwhile, a woman has been found dead, face up under the ice. Suicide has been suggested, but that notion quickly falls apart. When her body disappears from the morgue, the police kick into overdrive. Iceland has almost no crime of any kind, let alone murder, and so immediately, they begin eyeing the Americans in their midst, including Finn.

Finn is a memorable character. He’s funny looking, like a cross between a Gecko and E.T., and yet, thanks to his training, he can merge seamlessly into a crowd and be invisible. His traumatic childhood haunts him, but the authors don’t beat us to death with this aspect of his personality. To my delight, he is burdened with none of the overused tropes used by lesser authors such as alcoholism. He is not on a mission to avenge the deaths of people in his personal life, and he doesn’t get kidnapped and thrown in the trunk of a car or van. Bad guys don’t try to harm his family—of which there is none, in any case—or his pets. He doesn’t get neurotic and bite his lip till he tastes blood, or bunch his fists up so tightly that he cuts his palms with his own fingernails. Feel me? I have quite a list of things I never want to see in a novel again. This happens, once one reads over a thousand novels in this genre, and for awhile I quit the genre entirely, thinking that there was nothing new left to read. Webb and Mann have proven me wrong, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

One last word about setting. Though Finn is a resonant protagonist, the setting is more important here than in most thrillers; that was the case in Steel Fear, which was set on the aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and it’s true here, as well. The descriptions are resonant, but they don’t slow us down. This is a true thriller, with a pace that never flags.

I’m in this series for the duration. I also urge other women to ignore the promotions that boast that this is Alpha Male material. Last time I looked, I was an old lady school teacher, and I am all in. If you love a good thriller, I highly recommend both Finn books to you.