A highly readable and intelligent thriller…
Phayre utilizes his experience with ransom drops and real-life pirates to craft a well-paced thriller, setting his promising new series in motion. When a novice band of Somali pirates steals an oil tanker, a team of experts, including negotiators, security, and maritime experts comes in to locate and recover the tanker. With the crew’s lives at stake and a massive environmental disaster looming in, the team must do everything in their power to make their mission successful. But things are not as easy as they seem on the surface. Phayre certainly knows his way around ransom drops and dealings with modern-day pirates and parlays this knowledge into an enthralling page-turner. There are fast-paced plot twists, nifty negotiations, and relentless political intrigue as he piles on the setting, surprises, and details. The intriguing premise is absorbing, and the expert plotting and execution keep the readers turning pages fast. Scares, negotiations, plot, and counterplot—things get complicated, with Phayre throwing in surprises, one after another. Abdi and Zahi remain the prime movers, and the array of secondary characters are thoroughly sketched out. Phayre knows how to spring a surprise: he takes time out to explain the nitty gritty of the modern-day pirate maneuvers, but he does so without slowing the pacing or losing the momentum. The result is a taut, compulsively readable tale that is well suited to the lovers of swiftly moving military thrillers. Phayre is an author to watch.
The Ransom Drop: The Response Files: Somali Piracy Action Thriller
By Rob Phayre
Pub date October 7, 2021
ISBN 979-8491769384
Price $21.99 (USD) Hardcover, $13.99 Paperback, $0.00 Kindle edition