Rise of the Order Didn't Get a Rise out of this Reader!
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Author: Trevor Scott
Title: Rise of the Order Genre: Spy thriller Ever heard of the “body-bang metric”? Me neither – that’s because I just invented it. You divide the number of dead bodies by the number of days before the “hero” bangs the lust interest for the first time; the bigger the number the crappier the writing. I’m not certain what the metric is for The Rise of the Order, but it must be somewhere in triple digits. Yeah, it’s that bad. Jake Adams met his new client in an Austrian bar; before they could finish that first beer there were three bodies on the floor. They took off for the Czech Republic, where in short order they stumbled over at least one more corpse. Meanwhile, the two are being pursued by not one, not two, but three different agencies. Their bumper must be lined with transmitters… Turns out that the client is the high priest of some Templar Knight-like group, the Teutonic Order, that’s recently fallen on hard times. There are still lots of secret members, but they’re no longer killer crusaders, just sweet and charitable like friendly puppies. The head bad guy, who’s built a core cadre from aging ice hockey players, is your typical filthy-rich racist megalomaniac; who is banging a drop-dead gorgeous Ukrainian… or so he thinks. Adams, being tailed by his ex-lover Toni Contardo, opts to forego a carnal reunion with the dusky Italian CIA station chief. Instead, he decides to get down with foxy Olympian Anna Schult of Interpol. It takes, by my count, just two days (and several more bodies) before he finds the perky-breasted blonde leaning naked in his bedroom door. What crap. Apparently the fifth novel of twelve-plus in the Jake Adams series of “spy” “thrillers,” Rise of the Order is simply derivative rubbish. The plot is stereotype layered on stereotype, yet somehow manages to remain remarkably threadbare. Motivations are silly when they’re not nonexistent and even the main characters are flimsier than cardboard – Saran® Wrap, perhaps? Author Trevor Scott could use a good editor to wean him off his obsession with brand names (no one drives a car, it’s a Skoda or an Audi Quattro or a Volkswagen Golf) and to catch the frequent errors in continuity. Adams’ VW wavers back and forth between Golf and Golf TDI, even once morphing into something called a “VW Gulf.” He’s equally obsessed with the many weapons carried by all those spies. Word choice throughout the text is often puzzling and occasionally downright amusing, while pronouns wander all over the map. And what moron would head out for an overnight stakeout in the Alps, mid-winter, wearing a Spandex® competition XC ski suit? Even if it does show off a marvelous little ass? Jay-sus, what a stupid plot device! Worst of all is Scott’s eagerness to get to his sex scenes, all of which involve beautiful and remarkably horny women – apparently, there are no homely or just plain ordinary-looking women in Europe (not my experience, by the way). Including some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo about nano-sized assassins does not, unfortunately, improve the plot. If I hadn’t gotten this free, I’d want my money back. Unfortunately, I can’t get a refund of the time it took to read it... all content copyright © 2001-present by scmrak
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