Genre: Thriller
Rating: 3 Water Towers
The action picks up in “The First Commandment” where it left off in “Takedown”.
Scot Harvath is in the hospital taking care of Tracy when his boss Gary Lawlor visits with some news on the attack on Tracy. Some of the blood smeared on Scot’s door was lambs blood and it contained a radioactive substance. Scot wants to hunt down the person responsible but Gary says he can’t and after a visit to the White House…..President Rutledge says the same thing.
Scot is not to get involved. Period.
Six months before the attack on Tracy five prisoners were released from Guantanamo. These five were known terrorists and were guaranteed freedom by the U.S.A. even though “The First Commandment” of terrorism is to never deal with a terrorist. The U.S. did, and it is backfiring big time.
One of the released prisoners is on a quest to kill relatives and friends of Scot’s. After making Scot suffer all these losses…….he will kill Scot.
Good luck with that….
Luckily, Scot does not listen to the President (not a good thing to do by the way) and starts hunting down those who he knows were released (and he suspects of being the killer). He was given the list of four prisoners that were released by the Troll….notice I said four. The Troll kept one person off the list for reasons you will find out when you read the book. Unfortunately, this is the killer.
As the attacks against Scot’s friends and family continue, Scot tracks down the prisoners and does away with them one by one. This puts President Rutledge in an awkward position since he promised safe passage for the prisoners to keep a terrorist attack of unimaginable horror from happening….ooops, way to go Scot. (But then again…you never deal with a terrorist.)
President Rutledge decides that Scot needs to be stopped…dead or alive.
Scot is branded a traitor, and is being chased by his old friend Rick Morrell and his band of Special Ops soldiers. The action intensifies as Scot races to find the killer before he commits the final act of revenge on Scot’s ex-girlfriend Meg Cassidy.
Although I enjoyed “The First Commandment” it is not, in my opinion, up to par for Brad Thor. The reason for letting the prisoners go is weak and trusting a known felon (the Troll) is something Scot Harvath would never let happen. There are other issues that were bothersome for me, but, maybe I’m being an overly critical engineer.
This much I can say: When the action begins in earnest, Brad Thor shines, leaving the reader ready for the next book in the series “The Last Patriot” which hit the Book Stores on July 1st.
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