spalmero's Full Review: Suzanne Brockmann - The Defiant Hero
Yes, it's another review of a Suzanne Brockmann book. I admit it, I'm a sucker for a man in uniform. I fall into that female stereotype.
Ms. Brockmann is the author of Silhoutte's Tall, Dark and Dangerous series, about a team of Navy SEALs. She's gotten through the members of Team Ten, but she hasn't gotten tired of SEALs in general. A lot of readers are thankful for that.
The Defiant Hero is the second of of her books regarding SEAL Team Sixteen, the Troubleshooters.
Meg Moore is a language specialist. Once upon a time, she was married to a diplomat named Daniel Moore, and lived in the Embassy in Kazhakstan with him. When the book opens, however, she's living and working in DC. She's a successful career woman, and she's just been approached in the parking garage below work by a terrorist telling her that her grandmother and daughter have been taken hostage.
That's worse than the worst day of rush hour traffic, if you ask me.
Meg, however, has little choice but to go along. She marches into the Kazhakstani embassy in DC, and takes three men hostage. She's got a backup plan, though. Once locked in the men's bathroom with her hostages, she insists on speaking with an old 'friend', and a SEAL, John Nilsson.
John and Meg originally met back in Kazhakstan when he was on a mission to rescue another diplomat. She helped him to get the task completed safely. Now she needs his help in return, to help her think of a way out of this latest mess.
And he, of course, can't refuse.
Ms. Brockmann once more delivers with characters that I cared about, and wanted to see survive to walk away relatively unscathed. Unlike the books she's written for Silhouette, however, these books aren't bound by rules of appropriate language. Where she's been forced to tame the language a SEAL might realistically use in the past, in this book, she cuts loose. I found myself startled by this, and I'm extremely hard to offend; if you're sensitive to four-letter words or vulgarities, this might not be the book for you.
Ms. Brockmann also successfully tells three stories successfully. Not only does she handle Meg, John and the terrorists, but she shows us more of a budding love/hate relationship between two secondary characters -- Sam and Alyssa -- and she tells of a World War II romance between Eve -- Meg's grandmother -- and her husband. It's a skill those of us who are still aspiring authors wish we could match.
It backfires a little, however, in that sometimes the secondary stories are more interesting than Meg's determination not to accept the help she's asked for, or her determination to die. Interestingly, in a recent reader poll, Sam and Alyssa have been voted as romance readers' favorite couple, while Meg has been voted the Most Annoying Heroine.
So. I leave you to draw your own conclusions. I enjoyed the book, which shouldn't come as a surprise.
Would I recommend it? Yes.
Do you need to read all the books in the series to know what's going on? No.
Is it perfect? Not hardly. But it's entertaining and engaging, and that's good enough for me.
To save her daughter, kidnapped by terrorists, translator Meg Moore will do anything to meet their demands. When Navy SEAL John Nilsson is summoned by...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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