Andrew Peterson: Forced to Kill

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Andrew Peterson showed a lot of promise in "First to Kill" which was an exciting and entertaining page-turner thriller. In this follow up IMHO he has tried too hard and has produced a far-fetched, unnecessarily gruesome, overly-detailed and pedestrian thriller.

We again meet Peterson's super-hero Nathan McBride, an ex-CIA covert ops type with special forces background who has parted company after a near-death kidnapping and torture in Nicaragua. This time Natham has to face up to his past when his torturer, Montez de Oca comes back from the dead to spread his evil skills of torture, this time within the USA.

Once again, private security consultants, Natham and his partner Harvey get involved with the FBI, the CIA, the DOD and a plethera of other US government players - this time to track down and capture Montez. They want to use Natham and Harvey under extreme secrecy so that there is complete deniability. Natham and Harvey should have realised then that things were not as they seemed.

A major topic of this book is extreme torture so it not for the faint of heart or squeamish - indeed a lot of the descriptions are not really needed to fill out the plot.

This was an extremely difficult book to rate especially as I found the finale very difficult to understand or believe. Personally I would probably rate it 2.5 stars but because most potential readers seem to thrive on these kind of escapist and unbelievable themes I reluctantly rounded it up to 3 stars (OK). I will probably read Option to Kill but I have a lot of other books to read first.