Two Messes, No Hits

Eric Van Lustbader has been a name at the top of the political and suspense thriller genre since his early 30s. He was selected by the Robert Ludlum estate to continue writing the adventures of Ludlum's super-assassin Jason Bourne following Ludlum's death in 2001, as well as to finish some of Ludlum's incomplete manuscripts.

Other than these novels, Van Lustbader has focused on stories with Eastern or martial arts themes, but in 2008 he began writing about U.S. ATF agent Jack McClure and his special relationship with President-elect Edward Carson and Carson's daughter Alli. Blood Trust is the third Carson-McClure novel and brings the pair into a secret operation against an Albanian crimelord heavily involved in human trafficking. Alli has been training to become a federal agent herself but faces a charge she murdered a man she had been casually dating. McClure must help her clear her name and uncover the origins of the plot, which will connect to the operation against the crimelord.

Reading Blood Trust, it's hard to see what the Ludlum estate saw in Van Lustbader that led them to say, "That's the guy for us!" Ludlum could be long winded and include one too many infodump speeches along the way in his stories, but it was almost always possible to know where the story was going and what was happening along the way. Pivotal characters appear in Blood Lust well after there's room for them, and others disappear just as suddenly. There are a least three nefarious plots rattling around inside the narrative that cross back and forth along each other beyond any ability to keep track. Both Jack and Alli have conversations with Emma, Jack's dead daughter -- it's hard to tell if they're projecting, hallucinating, daydreaming or really talking to a ghost. But not as hard as it is to care.

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Ben Coes' first novel with ex-Special Forces soldier Dewey Andreas, Power Down, was a slam-bang action thriller that moved smoothly between Wall-Street boardrooms, Central American jungles, the Canadian Rockies, Manhattan and a few dozen places in between. Dewey ended the novel at a ranch in the Australian outback, hiding from the terrorists seeking revenge on him and from the government he felt had long ago betrayed him.

But he's being sought out again in Coup d'État, because he's just the man who gives a crazy scheme to save the world its only chance of success. Of course.

A border incident between India and Pakistan has flared into full-scale war, and the religious fanatic leading Pakistan is ready to up the stakes to even more dangerous levels. If the two nations start trading nuclear blasts, then the United States and China would get involved on behalf of their respective treaty partners, and that conflict could cause untold death and devastation. India has agreed to hold off on its own ultimate solution to see if the U.S. plan could prevent atomic war, but that plan needs Dewey Andreas, who is busy fighting off a terrorist hit squad.

As before, Coes writes rip-roaring action and battle scenes, and doesn't leave even secondary characters two-dimensional. He seems curiously sloppy about details -- India has a prime minister, not a president, and some of the travel times between different places are unrealistic unless someone involved says "Beam me up."

The last third of the novel, with the plan in action and its aftermath, just plain falls apart. It has a definite feel of setting up Coes' just-published The Last Refuge, but using so much of one book to set up another one is kind of a cheat. Especially when it's done this clumsily. Considering how good a start Power Down was, here's hoping Coup d'État is just a sophomore slump.