4 stars out of 5
Members of the uber-secret Black Wasp group affiliated with the (so far) government-sanctioned Op-Center pulled off a coup that made the Chinese look bad - or so they decided - and they retaliated with an almost unthinkable act. Trying to get to the bottom of it - and prevent escalation - Chase Williams, head of the Op-Center, agrees to meet with a man who's been trusted by Matt Berry, head of think tank Trigram Institute. That, alas, didn't turn out well; and now, the other Op-Center members are on high alert against real threats to their own lives while at the same time trying to figure out how to help their much-admired commander. Thrown in the mix is a Chinese defector and his family - a man the Chinese very much want back - and a wishy-washy President who doesn't seem to have a backbone.
It's all very fast-paced and, as might be expected, the outcome goes right down to the wire. There's even a cliffhanger that could change the direction of future books. None of this I can elaborate upon without spoiling things for other readers, but suffice it to say it's all very exciting and forced me to delay bedtime in order to find out how things turned out. And just for the record, two other things: first, there's really not a ton of the aforementioned gory military stuff; and second, the book really, really needs another serious editing pass. Way too many glaring errors to be overlooked at this stage of the game. That said, I thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review a pre-release copy. Bring on the next one - I'm eager to see how that cliffhanger is resolved!
Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Fallout by Jeff Rovin (St. Martin's Griffin, May 2023); 336 pp.
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