Enemies Foreign and Domestic
Matthew Bracken
A review from John Ross
By A Customer
Format:PaperbackI have several complaints about most thriller novelists. First, their protagonists are too often 100% virtuous with no humanizing flaws. Second, the protagonists let their enemies live when you KNOW the bad guys are going to come back and murder their kids etc. Third, everything the government does (hi-tech weapons, military & police tactics, criminal investigations, etc.) functions flawlessly. Fourth, too many stories have all the brilliant thinking and brave actions done by government employees (Special Forces, policemen, Intelligence operatives, etc.) Lastly, some novels have a basic premise that is just not believable. (Clancy's RAINBOW SIX is a prime example.)
Novelist Matthew Bracken has avoided these sins almost entirely in his excellent debut novel ENEMIES FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC.
It is a challenge for any writer to come up with a plot that is at once plausible enough to have the reader accept it but also unlikely enough that it has not actually happened yet in real life. EFAD's dramatic concept is this: A lone mid-level ATF executive engineers (with one accomplice) a tragic mass shooting incident and successfully arranges for an addled, destitute veteran to take the blame and be killed in the process.
He does this to create an emergency that will encourage the President to embrace a plan he has put together: Forming a secret "hit squad" comprised of overaggressive ATF agents with disciplinary problems. This squad's duty is to be proactive: identify domestic terrorists ("militia members") and kill them during raids. The trial is in the media, when the cameras see the (planted) contraband retrieved from the slain terrorist's dwelling. The antagonist wants to have this hit squad for the obvious reasons: funding, power, and prestige.
Naturally, some of the victims drawn into the web of treachery decide they have no choice but to fight back.
At each point in the storyline, as the good guys and bad guys acted and reacted, I kept asking myself if what was happening was plausible. How would *I* rewrite it to make it more believable? In some cases I thought that I would have had the parties react a bit differently, but I had to admit my alternate scenario was not necessarily more likely.
The fact is that when you get into the realm of serious, institutionalized government abuse of power in an environment with lots of resourceful, angry, well-armed people and the near-instant information flow of the Internet, you're in uncharted waters.
One critic said the female lead was an adolescent fantasy (21 yo, beautiful, motorcycle rider, expert shot, virgin) and I would have given her more edginess, but hey, a lot of readers like their heroes untainted.
Anyway, EFAD is an action-packed read, with most of the skill and creativity being demonstrated by the private sector, which is IMO 100% realistic.
Send a copy to your favorite Senator or Congressman...
An unsetling and instructional text
By Ward Dorrity
Format:PaperbackI began reading "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" over the weekend and I still feel unsettled after finishing it in the wee hours of Saturday. I feel unsettled because this book pulls no punches. It is realistic in terms of its portrayal the cold-blooded murderousness of some of the thugs that the government employs. It's dead bang on in terms of its assessment of those politicians who would cheerfully dance in the blood of innocents in order to advance their agenda. It's a clear-eyed picture of the unholy alliance between those who live to kill and those who seek to rule the living.
What this book is not about are comic-book, unstoppable heroes. The author imbues his characters with the flaws that all of us posess to one degree or another - fear, doubt, uncertainty, the pull of the path of least resistance and the comfortable life versus the hard and often unrewarding road of the correct moral choice. Bracken uses his characters to explore some of the very real moral dilemmas that many of us will face when the lines between good and evil are not as clearly drawn as we'd like. Those moral choices become even more difficult with the realization that some of those who swore an oath to protect us against "all enemies, foreign and domestic" have in fact become those very same enemies.
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of this book is the authors unflinching take on the price that many of us will pay when civil disobedience turns to armed resistance. Freedom isn't cheap. In fact, if history's any indicator, it's going to get damned expensive.
A real page turner!
By James R. Mckinley
Format:Perfect Paperback
Amazon Verified PurchaseIn the aftermath of a massacre at a football stadium, Congress passes emergency legilation banning all semi-automatic "assault weapons". American gun owners are instant pariahs, but respond to this violation of the constitution. This book accurately portrays what could happen if the portion of American society that desires to see all firearms registered, confiscated and eventually banned gets their way. This book shows how the "gun grabbers" could manipulate and shape events to spark a backlash against gun owners. In fact, it is not too differnet from the gun grabbers using tragedies such as school shootings to further their own political ends. The book also shows one possible response of the American gun owning public. American gun owners have been like a sleeping giant for far to long. Hopefully books such as this well help to awaken that sleeping giant before it is too late, and we become a nation of "sheeple" (to use one of the author's terms). The book is well written, the characters are believable, and likeable, and the book was very hard to put down.
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