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Browsing the internet, I saw a recommendation for the book Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost by Michael Walsh. It is still working its way to general availability. Hardcover only, no paperback, and a bit on the expensive side for an ebook. It is not available through the library.

At the same time, though, I found that I could get a hold* of his (so far) three-book series about a top-secret, super-spy who must battle with the forces of evil. So I read Hostile Intent instead.

The book starts me off with a partially-heard conversation about Carlos the Jackal. Then, just in case the reference wasn’t clear, our main character compares and contrasts his secret life with that of Jason Bourne (as a fictional character). The allusion has become real.

Hostile Intent is an up-to-date version of the that book I wanted when I was a teenager. A Jason Bourne thriller for the Age of Twitter, with a healthy dose of Tom Clancy thrown in for good measure. Although fiction through-and-through, the agencies, the technologies, the locations, and even the global politics are all real. Or, at least, they’re real as far as normies like ourselves are allowed to know.

The story is also chock full of pop-culture (and “cultural“) references, only a few of which are ultimately explained. I could probably grok less than half of them. I read my “airport novels” in bed, before I go to sleep, so while I was tempted to read with the book in one hand and google in another, I decided that it wasn’t worth it.

Besides showing off his own knowledge and tickling the fancy of those of us who share in his mastery of it, I’d say the goal for this author is to directly comment on our current predicaments. As I said, many of the elements of the story are real enough and even the fictional pieces – the politicians, the secret operatives, and the intricate terror plots – are plausible enough to be instructive. It is also interesting to me that the threats presented by our current array of bad guys is downplayed. We need a James Bond -style supervillain to test the mettle of our super hero. But behind all the Lex Luthors and Goldfingers, Walsh tells us that the real threat (as least as I read him) is the massive intrusion of the security state into any semblance of an ability to live a “private life.”

The first book was written in 2009 and was followed, annually, by two more installments. Wikipedia suggests that at least two more novels are expected for the series. As “current” and relevant as the 2009 story is to today’s world, one assumes there might be more to say in 2021. Whether you read what he has to say as profound or trite probably depends as much on your own politics as anything. These books are red meat for the red state dweller and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Beyond that, though, it is nice to have a good spy story that, Carlos references aside, isn’t based on the 1970s or the 1940s.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

*As I type this, Hostile Intent is $5 for paperback and $1.99 for e-book on Amazon. I’ve admitted I don’t understand the economies of streaming services – I understand even less how the book publishing market works.