The king of “faction” is back with Dead Fall, an all too prescient and timely thriller filled with vividly violent action sequences and reprehensible villains.
Scot Harvath is thrust into the middle of the Ukraine/Russia war, tasked with rescuing a missing US citizen who was aiding an orphanage before being captured and tortured by enemy forces. Unable to bring his team along for fear of the Russians getting wind of American interventions, he joins forces with a small group of international fighters to infiltrate the battlefield and conduct the mission. Only the enemy they’re up against is anything but conventional, rather a rogue Wagner Group unit made up of criminals and psychopaths straight from the worst prisons and mental institutions across Russia. To save the day and complete his mission, Harvath will have to journey to the depths of hell and back while dispatching the vicious Russian mercenaries and conscripting them to an eternity of burning in the netherworld for their crimes against humanity.
I’m hard-pressed to recall another book in this venerable series that is more graphic and contains as many stomach-turning moments as Dead Fall. But it’s not gratuitous. It’s completely necessary in the context of the story to elicit strong emotions beyond the “regular” horrors of war by generating such vile and irredeemable scum that you feel their repulsiveness dirty your soul before Harvath performs an exorcism and washes you clean by slaying the beasts. It’s quite the emotional swing, going from being despondent and disgusted by the depravity of these reprobates to vehemently fist pumping their demise. It’s quite glorious and redemptive.
It's a virtuoso performance by Brad Thor. His literary and predictive genius is on full display. A well-crafted plot, incredible characters, action galore, and anxiety-inducing events all wrapped within a storyline that hits way too close to home. How he keeps doing that, I have no idea. But for the sake of the thrillerverse, I hope he never stops.
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