Rogue Forces

by: Dale Brown

Published by: William Morrow (Imprint of Harper Collins Publishers)

Reviewed by Mark Owens

Dale Brown strikes again with his new novel, Rogue Forces. It’s yet another keeper in a long line of faced-paced military thrillers in his arsenal of books. Few authors know their way around aircraft and weapons like Dale Brown. And he keeps the action coming at machine gun pace from the beginning to the end. Fans of Dale Brown will not be disappointed by this new installment.

In Rogue Forces there is major trouble brewing on the Iraq-Turkey border. The cause of this conflict has nothing and everything to do with American intervention in Iraq. The Kurds, which make up 30% of Turkey’s population and 17% of Iraq’s population (according to Wikipedia), are a separatist faction in northern Iraq. Without a country of their own, they are a people at war with both Iraqi and Turkish governments.

The story is set when a new American President decides to pull out of Iraq, ending a war that didn’t ever make sense in his mind. Does this scenario sound familiar? It should, because Brown is a master at predicting possible foreign military maneuvers as a result of current political positioning.

In Rogue Forces, the Kurds take advantage of the weakened Iraqi nation to expand their influence, but there are still American defense contractors over in Iraq, and with their lives on the line, these contractors take things into their own hands. Brown weaves all the latest gadgets into the conflict, such as modern airborne laser-based missile defense systems, and this helps pull the story forward.

The only part of the novel that doesn’t work as well as it should is the required empathy for the Iraqis, Kurds and Turks. It’s halfway around the world after all. But this is a minor issue as the technology and American successes are forefront, weaving their way to victory.

Armchair Interviews says: Super storytelling you expect from Dale Brown in his military thrillers.

Author’s Web site: http://www.MegaFortress.com