Synopsis: Special Agent Mark Beamon is a maverick. His open disdain for the FBI's rules - and Directors - has exiled him to a no-profile post in the boondocks. But when a shadowy right-wing group starts flooding America's emergency rooms with dead and dying, Beamon is summoned back to Washington. Teamed with an icily efficient female field agent, he is given the thankless task of stopping the slaughter-even though millions of Americans secretly approve of it. As the body count rises, Beamon realizes there is something eerily familiar about his adversary, reminding him of the coldest killer he ever encountered - not a criminal but a law enforcement colleague. And for the first time, he wonders why he was chosen for this assignment. Was it his expertise - or his expendability? **Review** A group of former law enforcement and military guys, along with a firebrand preacher, Celebrated TV evangelist Reverand Simon Blake, decide a to put a dent in America's drug problem by poisoning the source in central America. Mark Beamon, is an admirable anti-establishment FBI agent banished to a second string position away from the action in Texas.Laura Vilechi, head of the FBI narcotics division, joins Beamon in attempting to stop the killers from continuing their mission even when the citizens the US openly cheer for those responsible. A vertual damned it you do, and damned in you don't moment for Beamon and Vilechi. The villians are diabolical in their means with John Hobart, a dismissed DEA Agent, at the forefront of the operation. Add to the story that Columbia's drug cartel, headed by Luis Colombar, also has an interest in discovering who poisoned the drugs and wants their immediate deaths.
I'm tempted to go with 4. I was pretty glued to it but overall it's obviously his first outing. Not near as compelling as Silva, Connelly, Eisler, Coes, Taylor, Thor, Flynn or Child's first books. The evil plot takes 40% of the book to get unfolded and we follow it in painstaking detail with the antagonist the focus of the first half of the book. The writing is odd as well. He jumps all over the place and skips some of the payload of actions. A guys sneaks up to take out a character, it happens but the next paragraph jumps from the sneaking right to it already occurring. The chapters in general may include 3 different POV's in each. Kind of sloppy but I give it to it being his first book. I've read Fade and it was awesome! I imagine he learned every time he wrote a book and got feedback. I will continue this series because it has a great lead character and I loved Fade. But this book, IMO, was poorly written overall. The story is creative and interesting. Again, I want to read the rest and if you're starved for this genre of book as I am, having read all of the other authors, then pick it up and go into the continuum books in the hope they improve to the quality of Fade.
What do You think about Rising Phoenix (1997)?
BEAMON DETECTIVE SERIES #1A deadly plague strikes America's cities.Hospital ERs are jammed, chaos reigns in the streets, men and women are dropping like flies. Someone has taken the war on drugs into their own hands and poisoned the narcotics supply. And the most chilling of all: the majority of Americans approve.Summoned back to Washington by the director who exiled him, maverick FBI agent Mark Beamon is given the thankless task of discovering who's behind the full-page ads that have suddenly appeared in newspapers across the country, giving addicts a simple choice: Quit or die.Teamed with a female field agent as icily analytical as he is intuitive, Beamon begins a desperate manhunt for the only mass murderer in history ever to win popular support. The race is on against the drug cartels, the Cosa Nostra, and the random violence on the streets as the poisoned drugs take their grim toll.Agent Laura Vilechi wants to spread the net wide, across three continents, but Beamon's gut tells him to look closer to home. There is something eerily familiar about his ruthless adversary, reminding him of the coldest killer he ever encountered—not a criminal but a colleague in an interagency undercover operation. Could it be that this invisible enemy is the U.S. government itself
—Pattianne
This is the very first book written by Kyle Mills and since then he has written more than 20 books but this is the only one which I have read. This book deals with a very real problem which provides a logical answer but yes you know logic doesn't always work well in real life scenarios. This is what happens when a Right Wing Group starts murdering drug users. In comes Mark our hero and through muddy scenes we finally reach the end. This book had all FBI, Police, DEA et. al. and a cold cold killer. You would enjoy this as well.
—Vikas Khair
With the financial help of a TV evangalist, a former DEA agent comes up with a plan to poison the cocaine products coming to the US from Columbia. The plan is more succesful than anticipated, killing hundred of thousands of drug users. THe FBI brings in Mark Beamon, crack investigator (and sometime screw-up) to head the team. When the cartel discovers the identity of the culprit, at the same time the FBI does, the race is on to see who gets him first.This book was difficult to read. The e-book version had punctuation problems, allowing sentences to run together. There were little or no chapter divisions, making the story, sometimes, hard to follow. The overall story itself was very good.
—Ed Schmidt
