After football season ended for me, I was able to relax and get a little bit of reading done. Right away I knocked down two Brad Thor novels, which I thought would be fun. I was right. I bought The Lions of Lucerne over a year ago based on a recommendation but I hadn’t got around to reading it, and when I was halfway through, I stopped by a local used book store and happened to come across Path of the Assassin
, which is book #2 in the series about Scot Harvath.
The Lions of Lucerne is about secret service agent Scot Harvath, who’s on duty when terrorists attack the President of the United States and his daughter. Naturally, Harvath is a former Navy SEAL and knows everything about everything, so he goes from Secret Service agent to rogue commando in an effort to hunt down the perpetrators. It’s a fun and wild ride that takes Harvath across the Atlantic. I had not known this previously, but author Brad Thor previously hosted a traveling show, and he seems to try very hard to incorporate his knowledge of foreign (and domestic) geography. I guess it adds authenticity to an extent, but it’s kind of like that annoying name-dropper you met at a party once. (Side note: Kirk Ferentz was an annoying name-dropper when I saw him at a clinic a few years ago.) Aside from that, the pacing of the story was done very well, and the ending was mostly satisfying.
I say “mostly satisfying” because some of the loose ends were not tied up at the end of The Lions of Lucerne, but Thor went back to them for Path of the Assassin. I thought Thor’s style was similar to that of Lee Child’s in the Jack Reacher novels, but while the Reacher novels ping-pong back and forth throughout Reacher’s life and are only loosely connected to each other, Thor shows more continuity by building on the previous story. Path of the Assassin connects the terrorist organization from book one, and the events from the first book are mentioned numerous times. While you can reach any Reacher novel without having read another, you would be missing big chunks if you didn’t read the Harvath novels in order.
As of this writing, I’m three-quarters of the way through book #3, State of the Union, but I will probably be finished by the time this publishes.
What have you been reading lately?
