Flight of the Fox ★★☆☆½

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Title: Flight of the Fox
Series: ----------
Author: Gray Basnight
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 406
Words: 108K

Synopsis:

Sam Teagarden, former math professor and recent widower (his wife died in a car accident that also broke both of Sam's legs), is attacked by drones and only saved by the heroic sacrifice of his dog. This leads into Sam going on the run and his young neighbor being killed by the assassins after Sam. Said assassins then make it look like Sam did the dirty deed. All the while Sam has no idea why anyone would be doing this, he's just a math professor.

Turns out Sam was mailed an encrypted document that once he decodes it while on the run, details the love life between J. Edgar Hoover (head of the FBI back in the day) and his second in command. It also details how Hoover uses his position to hire other sexual deviants ostensibly for the FBI but in reality for his own pleasure. There are also references to Operation Over Easy, which is revealed as a secret hit team to take out any internal threat that Hoover considers a danger to the nation. Dangers like John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr, Hemmingway, etc.

The modern day successors to Operation Over Easy, the DFC, are the ones gunning for Sam. With no oversight, they can't allow the public to find out what their government has been doing for the past 90 years.

Sam outwits them all and releases the information to Congress, after many thrilling adventures and near-death experiences, all the while ostentatiously NOT naming the current President of the United States.

My Thoughts:

I enjoyed the story part of this ultra-paranoid thriller. It was fun to read about Sam as he dodges, ducks and weaves his way around, between and through some top notch assassins.

The author is from New York and sadly, his politics get in the way. The one republican shown is a caricature of a conservative christian who ends up practically insane after claiming that keeping the files secret is God's will. Then you have the democrat who is open, honest and only wants the truth to be told to the American public. What a crock of poo. The author's hatred of guns comes through loud and clear as well. Only the bad, evil, insane people in the story CHOOSE to use guns. Sam of course, being a paragon of virtue and goodness is FORCED to use guns by the bad, evil, insane people. But he really doesn't want to, honest. And of course, the tearing down of any authority because they're secretly corrupt and despotic is pretty standard for a liberal from New York. But the solution? Well, the author's brand of government of course!

While I enjoyed the story, I won't be reading any more by Basnight. He is everything that McCarthy was trying to fight against and lost.

★★☆☆½