DWD's Reviews

An interesting ride, but not told as clearly as it could have been. Published in 2006 The premise of Mad Dogs is a winner - picture an insane asylum just for spies that have been pushed beyond the breaking point. There are victims of torture, people who have compromised cherished values, lost loved ones in the line of duty or have just seen things that no one should have to see. Now, imagine that 5 of these patients have a doctor that they love - he pushes them, challenges them and makes progress with them. And, he gets murdered right in the room where they do their "group" time, making it look like one of them had done it. James Grady So, this group of misfits decides to flee from the frame job and find the root of the conspiracy that killed their doctor. Each of them resurrects their skills and works together to escape, find clues and follow the scant trail back to the source. Sounds great, right? Kind of like a hard-edged version of the Michael Keaton...

Could have been better with a bit more set up Imagine that James Bond were no longer needed for Her Majesty's Secret Service so they decided to eliminate him so that he couldn't embarrass them later. This is sort of the premise of River of Darkness , except that Jud Stuart is not nearly as suave and debonair as Bond and he works for the American government. Stuart is a special forces soldier recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam war. He is involved in action in Laos, Iran, the USSR, Washington D.C. and Central America. Finally, he's had enough and decides to use his connections to smuggle drugs into the U.S. and pocket the cash for himself (and eventually becomes a marked man due to nebulous connections to the Iran-Contra scandal). The first 100 pages or so of this novel are confusing due to a large amount of flashbacks with little or no setup. Once all of the characters are established this is much more tolerable. The flashbacks themselves are very interesting si...