This
review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained
therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to
copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions.
Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted
Permission
Title:
False Flag
Series: Jason Trapp #2
Author:
Jack Slater
Rating: 1.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Action/Adventure
Pages: 362
Words:
114K
This
was an absolute piece of garbage, trash, whatever word you’d like
to refer to it as. I’ll be done with this writer after this.
To
give any of those of you who have hung around for awhile, this
reminded me exactly of the Agent
Zero series and the Jet
series, both of which were also about supposedly super duper secret
agents written by authors who obviously don’t know a thing about
that subject, and I do mean absolutely nothing about it.
I
ended up emailing Fraggle to run some things across her radar to make
sure I wasn’t completely out to lunch. I wasn’t. So I’m going
to copy/paste the majority of that email to show just how stupid this
author this and why a brick wall is smarter than he supposedly is.
/wide
I
didn't start taking notes until later. I wish I had started from the
get-go. But I'll try to list the chapter, the relevant sentence or
sentences in italics and then my question or comment.
I
also had a ton more notes after where I leave off, but most of it was
around Trapp being wildly inconsistent in his methodology (who he
kills, why, etc) that shows he's not a professional at all. We're
just told that he is. I was getting steamed, again, so figured I'd
leave off :-D
Plus
a lot more pro-China stuff. The President of the United States would
NEVER lower himself to talk to some random ambassador. He'd be on the
Red Phone, or whatever color it is, with the General Secretary (ie,
China's president) himself. And this is an instance of the author
just not getting the American mindset. Whether it is of Trapp or
anyone else, they do not THINK like Americans who are in those
positions. It is Hollywood'ized beyond even Hollywood.
Chapter
14: about Trapp
"Maybe
he was being irrational, but he couldn’t help it."
The
"best in the business" agent, like Trapp supposedly is, has
that kind of feelingzzz trained out of him. He CAN help it, or he
would have been dead long before this.
Chapter
23: about Ikeda (female agent)
"Alstyne
was her first kill. He deserved it, but the CIA operative was no
psychopath. She should have been flown directly to an Agency shrink
after completing the operation, for a debrief to check he mental
state."
Is
equating killing of any kind with being a psychopath. I can't even
begin to describe how wrong that mindset is. Especially for those in
a military/black ops situation.
Killing
is part and parcel of an agents job. It is beyond unbelievable that
she would have immediately flown back to have her little feelingz
coddled. She'd get a 10min exam to make sure she didn't enjoy it and
that would be it. She'd spend more time on paperwork for the poison
lipstick. And only a naive idiot in the business would think
otherwise. Or an uninformed writer.
Chapter
28: about Trapp arriving in China
"he
knew that if America picked a fight with this country, it would be
like Germany invading the Soviet Union in 1941, or Napoleon doing the
same a hundred and fifty years earlier."
Choice
of the word "picked a fight". The whole book is pro-China,
anti-America and no agent of the United States black ops would even
THINK that way. And numbers aren't everything. Sure, China has
4 times the US's population, but 9/10ths of them are still uneducated
peasants, because China's communist party keeps them that way to
control them. We'd kill the leadership and let the country
wallow like a ship without a rudder. I'm a civilian and even I know
that much military doctrine.
Chapter
39: about Trapp and his boss talking about Ikeda
"“Ikeda
isn’t the priority,” Mitchell said sharply. “She knew what she
was signing up for. Those are the risks in this business.”
Trapp’s
fist clenched, and a pang of anger shot through his body. He knew
that Mitchell wasn’t saying anything that he himself didn’t
believe. Hell, he’d said exactly the same to others many times.
But
this, somehow, was different. It wasn’t academic, or cut and dry.
He had sent Eliza into that room and hadn’t been able to protect
her.
She might have known what she was signing up for. But she
couldn’t possibly have expected to have been failed in that
way.
This was Trapp’s mess. And he damn well intended to clean
it up."
He
obviously doesn't believe it, otherwise he wouldn't be "reacting"
this way. He's no professional. It isn't different. Every agent
can expect to die on a mission, and to be tortured first. Trapp knows
this, Ikeda knows this. And it isn't Trapp's job to "protect"
Ikeda, she's a full fledged agent after all. Nor is it his "mess".
His job was to kill the scumbag and recover the info/flash drive. He
did both of those. Rescuing Ikeda is a good thing, but it's not
priority, just like his boss says at the beginning.
Chapter
42:
""But
in all those years, at least since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the
real threat had come from terrorists, not nation states."
And
those terrorists were and continue to be, funded by Nation States.
It's a series of proxy wars. 9/11 was funded by the Saudis. Libya
trained and funded terrorist cells all during the 70's and up until
Qaddafi died. And a "trained agent" would know this and not
make asinine statements like the above.
★✬☆☆☆
From
Devilreads.com
They
say revenge is a dish best served cold.
But Jason Trapp is
losing his taste for it. For six months, his personal crusade has
taken him around the world, mopping up the last of the Bloody Monday
conspirators. There's only one left, and after the crooked financier
Emmanuel Alstyne meets his maker, Trapp's debt will be paid in full.
He vows he's done with the business of death.
Unfortunately, it
isn't done with him.
After a simple kill mission goes sideways
in Macau, leaving a CIA spy kidnapped, half a dozen Chinese agents
dead, and America's satellites burning in the skies, Trapp is
propelled back into the game. Eliza Ikeda was taken on his watch, and
he's determined to get her back–no matter the cost. The problem is,
he has no idea who took her, why, or what they plan to do next.
Trapp
knows he's being played. And with the world's only two superpowers
hurtling toward the precipice of war, time is running out...
