Ben Coes

When they talk about fast-paced, adrenaline-filled nonstop action, Eye for an Eye by Ben Coes is the type of book they are talking about. It’s a little (ok a lot) over the top, but man is it fun.

Dewey Andreas is a great action hero. He’s impossibly handsome and incredibly good at his job. When his fiance is accidentally killed by Chinese agents during an attempt on Dewey’s life, a fiance who happens to be the US National Security Advisor, it sets Dewey on a mission to kill the head of show more Chinese intelligence. A mission that will take him back and forth across the globe leaving a trail of destruction behind him.

This is the kind of book where you check your critical thinking at the door and just relax and have fun. A lot of the action strains believability, as well as the laws of physics, but you are so invested in the characters and story, you don’t really care. The bad guys are ruthless and evil, the good guys are determined and on the side of angels, but they are not one-dimensional.

Coes does an incredible job of fleshing out his characters and making them three dimensional, while also delivering an incredible page-turning action filled book. This book starts fast and stays fast. When you get used to the pace, Coes kicks it up another notch. There is a car chase scene on the highways of Portugal that has the pages turning so fast they almost catch fire. Coes’ style of short passages and alternating perspectives really works to ratchet the action and the tension up.

The story uses China’s dominance in both the financial market as well as electronic surveillance and hacking as key parts of the plot, which gives an anchor of believability to the story. Coes is a talented writer and Dewey Andreas is a great action hero. I look forward to more entries in this series. A great summer read and a top-notch thriller. Highly recommended.

I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book. show less

Pakistan has elected a new leader: a radical cleric named Omar El-Khayab, who is determined to spread Islam throughout the world by any means necessary--including violent jihad. A series of relatively minor events cause tension between India and Pakistan to escalate, until Pakistan drops a nuclear bomb on an Indian city. Now, America must find a way to resolve this conflict before it becomes a full-scale nuclear war between the India and Pakistan, which would doubtless draw their allies, show more America and China, into conflict with one another, leading to the bloodiest war the world has ever seen.

The only plan that has a hope of defusing the situation without the loss of millions of lives is to forcibly remove El-Khayab from power, and install a new leader who is willing to make peace with India. The only man with a hope of succeeding is Dewey Andreas. Unfortunately, he is in Australia, trying to avoid being killed by terrorists seeking revenge. Somehow, he must escape them, get to Pakistan, and accomplish the coup d'etat--in only two days.

Coup d'Etat by Ben Coes is a thriller, to be published in September 2011. Its story, and particularly the buildup to the war, is surprisingly believable: tensions escalate as a result of minor, but realistic, confrontations and misunderstandings, and the major figures are realistically bound by political considerations, which leads to the proposal of the unorthodox solution which gives the book its title.

The story's verisimilitude is Coup d'Etat's best feature; it doesn't fare so well in other respects. The realistic buildup of tensions between Pakistan and India come at the price of making the first hundred pages slow and uninteresting. The dialogue and narration are often stilted and filled with jarring use of idiom and reference to particular brand names. Worse, Coes seems unable to write more than a few pages about Dewey without admiring his manly physique and cold attitude. When people meet Dewey for the first time, we're assured that they are in awe of his muscles and intimidating presence.

This emphasis on masculinity is detrimental to the book in general, and to the reader's sympathy for the protagonists in particular. The protagonists kill a number of people without any compunction, and sometimes with relish. Dewey enjoys keeping his opponents alive just long enough to see panic and defeat in their eyes, before killing them.

If you can stomach the praise of masculinity and militarism, and are willing to wade through the first quarter of the book until it picks up, Coup d'Etat has a pretty good story to tell. With these caveats, I'd cautiously recommend it to readers looking for a thriller examining potential conflict in the Middle East.

Disclosure: This review is based on a free advance copy of the book. show less

Ben Coes! I wanted to scream while reading this book. What a roller coaster ride that was, I almost had a heart attack in every chapter that Dewey appears whether it was the Iranian or the old North Korean general (6'2"? c'mon now....) then again at the apartment in Pyongyang. This is what I called action packed from start to end. I have so many questions about Jenna, I'm guessing we'll find out next year?

I wanted to like this book ... but I didn't. Sure the action scenes were exciting and the core conflict between India and Pakistan was something different. But the execution of the story was ... bad. First, one of the essential components of the story was the worry that China would invade India but this worry was never satisfactorily explained. More problematic was the "need" to use a former special forces operative who has been "out of the game" for 10 or more years) as the only person who show more could lead a team to take on a highly improbable mission. And it's worth noting that the protagonist chosen for this special mission isn't able to speak the language, so that's not the reason for choosing him. I had a hard time getting past the idea that a 40-year-old ex-special forces soldier who didn't speak the language was more competent that an active duty soldier who did speak the language. Did I mention that the mission was so highly improbable as to be laughable? The downside risk was so high and alternate possibilities seemed much more likely to have success.

There were several other problems that really bothered me too. We learn early on that the protagonist apparently developed a relationship with the woman at the center of Power Down ... but that relationship took place "off screen" between that book and this one, thus really weakening any impact that it was supposed to have. It felt as if when the author began writing this second book, he decided he needed to go back and add a missing chapter to the previous story.

Another problem: For some reason, in this book, guns don't have muzzles, they have "nozzles". I've read a lot of thrillers over the years, but I've never read a book where muzzles are referred to as "nozzles". And it wasn't just once. It was numerous times (and the word muzzle never appears). I know. I searched.

And finally we come to one of the most glaring problems that I've ever encountered in a thriller like this (well, other than the similar sequence of errors in Power Down: Coes desperately needs an editor who pays attention to chronological sequences in books. I've actually thought of writing an open letter to Coes about this problem. Anyway, long story short, an event occurs and the author is very careful to describe the timing from the event until the Indian President is informed (37 minutes) followed by what the Indian President does in response. In the next chapter, the American President learns of the event (which happened in India) just 5 minutes after the event and calls the Indian President one minute later. But the Indian President (who won't learn of the event for 31 more minutes) not only knows about it, he's already had the discussions with his cabinet. Sure that may be nitpicking, but it just rips me right out of the story and makes me start watching for other, similar problems.

I may read another Dewey Andreas novel. I like his character and I like parts of the story. But the flaws are so huge, that I'm quite wary. show less