Continue reading »]]> What did I expect from A Sufi’s Ghost? Well, I expected it to be a great read–I always have that expectation from Mark Biskeborn–and I expected it to be action-packed. I expect a lot, don’t I?

Let me start by asking you as a reader what you thought of his last book, Mojave Winds? Now, don’t tell me you didn’t read it! That one was a slam dunk! Luckily, I am here to help you correct that small error. Mojave Winds was a great read and now, A Sufi’s Ghost is an even better read. Why? Because the writer has grown? Perhaps. Gotten better? Perhaps. Mainly because this is a top-notch action writer writing what he knows best– a rollickingly good story.

So, what actually happens? Well, I ain’t telling you… Okay, I will! I WILL! Just hold your horses and don’t keep pestering me! Larry Larson, after leaving the army, decides to be a bounty hunter. This in itself is a great thing! He finds himself in the Saudi desert… He…. nah, I am not telling you any more…

Okay, well let me tell you that this is a story that takes you through the secretive world of Saudi Arabia, religion, politics and a world we cannot see as Westerners.

 Just the words bounty hunter and Saudi desert should have you digging around trying to find the Amazon account password to buy this one.Then we come to a Biskeborn essential, he throws in a beautiful partner in crime, Carmen, and you will find yourself looking for the nearest camel to have your very own Harem Holiday.

What about his writing? Well, let me just tell you this first. Mark Biskeborn has really researched this book wonderfully. He has taken the time to paint a picture of a country, a desert seldom seen by most in the western world. He has researched all the nuances that could have made this book come unstuck. In short, he has written a book that I believe in and you will, too.

Yes, I have been raving about this one a lot. What can I say as a negative? Well, his writing style tends to wander sometimes, but then again, A Sufi’s Ghost itself is about wandering the desert. I do believe Mark Biskeborn has a fascination with the desert, you know? His last book Mojave Winds was set in the Nevada desert. Hey, Mark? Next time can we have a rollicking underwater adventure instead? Until then–go read this beauty by the man who could be the next king of the action writers…

 Click here to read an interview with Mark Biskeborn and learn more about the man behind the writing.

Continue reading »]]> I am a child of the nineties. I was not around when Vietnam was at its height and I only know of the war through history lessons, movies and books. When I picked up this book I didn’t know what to expect. Would this be a patriotic cry from a warrior of the conflict? Would this be an anti-war rant by a long lost hippy? Would this be a favourable account? Negative?

Groundbreaking book from an American hero

Covert The Not Known tells us not of the facts we read in books, it tells of the reality. The dirty, gruesome truths that are in essence the facts of war. This is not Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back or John Wayne in the Green Berets. This is a  book about a man who was almost destroyed by what he saw and thrown to the very ridge of madness by what he had to live with. Covert is powerfully written from the heart and almost like a therapy session for the writer. I think this book could well be the ultimate document about the Vietnam War.

The book opens with Jerry, a rebellious youth, who lives a troubled life in Fort Worth, Texas, finding his way to a recruitment station. With ease he then finds himself thrown into the world of the military. I found myself drawn into the story almost from the get-go. The truth of the matter is very different to the patriotic cries of history. Jerry became a Marine and served with honour– that is one of the many truths in this book. The other truths are that he became damaged, disregarded and dismissed with personality disorders. He suffered immensely because his country felt the need to fight a war it thought it could win but ultimately lost. This book at times is distasteful, gruesome, but ultimately honest and I believed every word Jerry wrote. I think anyone considering joining the forces should read this book. I think anyone who utters the word “war” or “invasion” in a positive or glorified way should read this book. Wars do not make people great. They destroy the men and women who are sent to fight them.

Jerry wasn’t destroyed. He was strong enough to pull himself around with the love of his wife. He lived a fulfilling and successful life and he managed to at least put some of this stuff behind him. That is the redeeming feature– he lived to tell the tale and made a success from his life until the very end. I believe that this book could be a very powerful motion picture. I think it has the makings of a very honest film about a war people seem to regard as a joke in the modern age. In my life, I have only read one book about Vietnam with the same powerful rhetoric. That book was called A Rumour of War. It was a bestseller and told the truth. This book is called Covert The Not Known. It is just as powerful and it tells even greater truths. I think Jerry did the world a huge favour writing this one. Perhaps one day we will learn from it.

Continue reading »]]> Gordon Osmond is an enigma in many ways. He has reinvented himself many, many times over the years, and it is with nothing less than a great pleasure that I write a review for his debut novel Slipping on Stardust. I could of course, be nothing less than compulsively in love with this book. I could sit here and say I didn’t understand it– I did– many will not. Is that a slur on Mr Osmond? Not at all. It is a sad fact that the use of educated English has dropped significantly in recent years. I do not think the dragon and vampire dwelling teenage readers will ever quite understand the kind of writing presented here. What we have here is something resembling a classic.

Now, you may be wondering why I say ‘resembling’? Well, frankly, the word classic has been thrown around so much it has tarnished the very notion of the word. Gordon Osmond writes like a professional writer. He writes with flair and purpose and his characters are almost written for the screen.

Wait!

Let me tell you about the plot before I start boring you with the details. What is the damn book about, right? Well… Imagine a movie star arriving in your neighbourhood. Your quiet, slow and usually comfortably boring neighbourhood. What would happen if he came to star in a local production? How would the town react, even if the star was ageing, over-the-hill, how would he be treated? How would the local amateur actors and actresses take to that? Throw in with care some key ingredients like sexual confusion, scandal, suicide, kidnapping…

You have found yourself with a story to remember.

Gordon Osmond has in many ways written something resembling the Hollywood classics. This isn’t a blockbuster. You will not find Sly Stallone running around in any movie adaptation of this book. It relies on plot and characterisation. In many ways, I was picking out actors for the roles as I learned more about the characters. I could see a part for Burt Lancaster, I could see a part for Dick Haymes, I could see a part for James Mason, I could see so many different nuances of Hollywood in its finest era. If this book had been written back then, it would have been a fine movie. Of that, there’s no doubt.

However, let me return to the point I was making earlier. This book is going to stump many people. Gordon Osmond writes with such eloquency and style- it is true that he writes like Oscar Wilde- but ask the younger generation of book readers who Oscar Wilde is and they will probably admit they have no idea.

Osmond is the King of Hollywood knowledge.

Will Slipping on Stardust be the teenage favourite? Probably not. Does Gordon Osmond care? Probably not. Do I care? Not at all, because this book is full of merit. Do his readers care? Not one jot. This book is bestseller material.

Want to go read something really cool and new and interesting? Yes? Okay, go buy this one guys!

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My latest review is for a book that has recently started to climb again in sales. Night of the Cossack is the first and current published effort by Tom Blubaugh.

When I first opened the Kindle publication of this book I didn’t know what to expect. The idea of writing about pre-revolution Russia came to Tom, apparently when he discovered that his grandfather had been a Cossack. I kept this in mind as I got to the first page of the first chapter.

The book opens with two brothers, Nathan and Israel Hertzfield, startled awake to find that their village is under attack from the Cossacks. The action packed start doesn’t dim… The action keeps rolling and rolling as the story of Nathan unfolds. Blubaugh has written an efficient and fast paced action adventure story for kids of all ages. The characterization is strong and the reader grows to know Nathan as a character. Nathan is a well developed character who always wants to do the right thing. That said, I think the fact that this book is a fictionalized attempt to create a back-story for his grandfather has made him biased towards the character of Nathan. Is that a bad thing? Perhaps, if you want a character who is multicoloured rather than just black and white.

Blubaugh is a creative writer who without doubt has talent, but sometimes one does find oneself wondering how this book could have been better. I think it could have done with more edge, but then this is a book that will be enjoyed by pre-teens who aren’t in love with the trolls and goblins that seem so popular right now.

What does happen to Nathan and Israel? What do the Cossacks do with them? Where do they end up? Why did the Cossacks attack? All these questions and more spring to mind. The book does ask many questions from the first page… You definitely find yourself turning the page to find out the answers, and I think that is one of this book’s strongest points. It is a page turner and you will want to finish it.

I have interviewed Tom Blubaugh twice (click here and here for those) and I find him to be engaging and honest. He is a deep thinker and that comes across in the book, too. Perhaps he hasn’t written with a plan in mind, but subconsciously he has developed the characters and given them purpose. I found all the characters had purpose and all acted quite realistically, without the wooden behaviour some writers use.

I will give Tom great credit for researching his subject thoroughly. The Cossacks are historically close to fact, the Okhrana, the troubles faced by a young Jewish boy living in an anti-semetic country; this book takes on the facts of the Russia we may have forgotten as history has moved on. The character of Nathan is always the Jewish boy trying to escape and Tom almost turns out his heart on some pages with poignancy and suffering. It is clear to me as a reader that this is the story that he has always wanted to write.

I will say that one thing that really frustrated me was the way Tom ended the book. There are few resolutions and the book leaves you with ‘what ifs,’ ‘what could be’ and ‘what happened?’

It was almost as though Nathan Hertzfield just disappeared from my life…

All in all, this is a pretty good romp through the Russia of the Tsars and it will delight many people around the world as it has already. I also think it is a good first attempt and shows signs of what may come from Tom Blubaugh later.

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Mike Trahan has written a book that really does something quite strange. It used to be a fact that a memoir would be a written account of the life of someone with a series of stories to tell. In modern times, post-1990 I mean, the memoir genre has been hijacked by every celebrity, near-miss pop star and TV personality in town. What has happened to stories of men who struggled against the odds to get to where they wanted to be?

Mike Trahan is what happened.

Now, that sounds a little dramatic– I grant you, I am rather dramatic. I got my copy of this book and I sat down expecting an interesting tale of a guy from Texas who got his wings and coped with life. What I actually found was the history of a time, a place, a family and the struggles and problems a family faced. Mike writes with striking honesty about his life– his father and his mother who raised him on a small farm over in West Orange, Texas. The man who would become Captain Mike Trahan started as just ordinary Mike who spent summers playing with his cousins and living off the land. This boy grew up poor, but never knew about poverty, because his family was so rich with love and devotion. He also left school at the beginning of eighth grade and didn’t look back. He just found another school, another route into his desired occupation. This book is not about great achievements, it’s not about fame– this book is about life, and most importantly, how you can deal with life.

Turning the pages, Mike writes as though he is telling you his stories over a beer and a smoke on a slowly closing day. You can feel the warmth of the love he has for his mother and the drive and ambition he had to reach his goal of being a pilot. You can pick any page of this book and you will learn something about Mike and in the process you will learn something about yourself. This is the real journey of life. Mike was lucky enough to know what he wanted from life– he took a fateful flight when he was fifteen and knew that he wanted to fly planes. So, Mike geared his whole life to fulfil that dream. He wouldn’t stop until he had his wings. That is the crux of the story. He didn’t sit back and say “I want to fly, but I am scared.” He looked at what needed to be done and he went straight ahead and did it. There were false roads and dead-ends of course. Mike spent two years on a football scholarship– it didn’t work out so he just changed schools and finished his education and jumped through the open window instead of banging his head on a firmly closed door. Trahan then found that he had a cyst on his tailbone– a cyst that would have made it impossible for him to join the forces. Did that stop him? You bet your ass it didn’t! He had it removed and bided his time until he could reconnect with his dream. Actually, this book isn’t really about flying or cysts or stories; this book is about finding your goal in life and creating acheivement. This book is about choices, actions, the ability to think for yourself and create your own future.

As you read The Gift you will be hooked by a book that has all the hallmarks of a touching and inspiring story. You will feel the love, the trials, the tribulations, the problems, the successes, the failures. You will discover a world that has all but disappeared now. You will hear stories of times long past; you will learn of a man who not only succeeded in his attempts, but he failed and he learnt from his failures. He didn’t give up; he didn’t say he couldn’t make it; he kept on going and going and going and going… He stood his ground and, sure, he hit the dust a few times, but Mike Trahan born in 1942 in West Orange, Texas, became Captain Mike Trahan after achieving over 600 hours of flying time whilst at college, whilst juggling his life, whilst living and breathing and striving.

For a guy like me, that’s a story I want to read. I know you will, too. Get the book and sit down and learn who the real Mike Trahan really is…and you may just learn something about yourself, too.

By Nick Wale

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“Pacy writing at its finest from the pen of Mark Biskeborn….”

 

I have just finished reading Mojave Winds: Second Edition by Mark Biskeborn. What can I say? Give me a few minutes to digest this one… It’s big… I have a lot to tell you.

I wonder if this is the first book that has been written about finding love in the desert? In case you’ve missed nature documentaries or planes recently– the desert is this big hot mass– just sand and bleached skeletons for miles around. So how do two people fall in love in such a place? Well, author Mark Biskeborn made it happen– he put two lost souls together on a bus and made them connect. Let me tell you about them. Sheila is a beautiful, talented Persian dancer who works in the best joints in Vegas. She has a huge void in her being, though– she feels like a trophy for men. It’s lucky for her that she meets freshly-discharged-from-the-army Kris Klug. The two meet and fall in love, but their love is endangered by the very fact that the bus they are traveling on is hijacked by drug dealers… What do the dealers want? I’m not going to tell you… But it isn’t sand!

Hooked yet? Well, it doesn’t end there. Kris is on the way to meet his Uncle Fred. Now, Fred is a wealthy trucking boss who wants to pass down the business. Before getting on the bus, Kris is told by a shady FBI agent called Jaeger that his uncle Fred may well have been involved in drug trafficking…

Are these two things related? Is Jaeger involved? Is Uncle Fred involved? What do the dealers want? What is Sheila doing on a bus in the Mojave desert? All these questions and more are asked and answered. Let me ask you… This is 386 pages of written work. Let’s take a few off for the front and back pages. Okay.. 380 pages. I normally read pretty quickly and try to review as quickly as I can. I ACTIVELY slowed myself down on this one. I slowed myself down to enjoy it and take it in. I wanted to prolong the experience because I was enjoying the experience. I am probably the only person in the world right now who is going to book tickets to visit the Mojave Desert, bleached bones and all. Here I come!

Hooked now? Hey! Let me tell you about the writing. ‘Detailed’ is a word I would use– detailed, but not boring. The writing is never boring. The story bounces– swings– smoothly narrates it’s way along. You can almost feel the heat of the desert. You can almost taste love dripping from the pages. The dialogue is never phoney, the story-line is never out-of-this-world. This is real life in book form in so many ways. Have you ever been in love? You will feel the bond between Sheila and Kris. Is this book dark? At times. I found myself hooked for the third time this week.  I don’t think I could ever put a Mark Biskeborn book down again. He has a real talent for getting a story across to a reader and adds those little flourishes that make the words as addictive as the drugs Uncle Fred is meant to be trafficking.

So what do I think? I think you should go buy this one! I don’t mean right now– I mean like a few minutes ago. I usually try to find fault in a book but this one makes it hard. If I have to find a negative, perhaps it is a bit long? But then the plot unfolds in such a way that actually the size is perfect. Open your change purse, folks, and go buy this one.

Mojave Winds: Second Edition is available on Amazon. Also visit Mark’s Author Page.

Reviewed by Nick Wale

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 ”An unmissable read worthy of any library and certainly one to keep and read over and over again..”

Meet Joey Ruff and his new book The Dark Communion. I was fortunate enough to be asked to review this one. What can I say? At first glance it sounds like a good read. Jono Swyftt is a hunter, a predator and his prey are those nasties you grow out of believing in when you start to grow up and realise about the real-life nasties. You know those monsters you grew out of believing about? You know– Orcs, Goblins, Trolls and such– well they exist in this world created by Joey Ruff. Jono meets them and dispatches them with relative ease– he’s a gun expert, an ex-cop and a priest. Supernatural beings beware! In this brand new novel, Joey Ruff has created a book that is nothing less than a rollicking action-packed journey from page one.

The Dark Communion opens with a preview story– rather like a TV show. Jono Swyftt is searching for a young girl called Julie Easter who has gone missing. To me, this book reads like an episode of The Shield– the reader feels like they are there as Joey Ruff writes with incredible skill in the first person. Jono is led to a disused and rundown house on the wrong side of town. What will he find inside? All I am going to tell you is that Joey had me riveted from the get-go with this one. I was up all night turning pages to find out what would happen next. What does happen next?

With Joey’s law enforcement background, The Dark Communion is technically brilliant. The history of weapons is touched upon, ammunition, and his own personal knowledge of weaponry shines through. This makes it great for a European like myself to sit and immerse myself in a book that really does idolise the gun. However, just as gun-mad as Jono Swyftt is, Joey created a second character called ‘Ape’ (otherwise known as Terry Towers) who doesn’t use guns at all. The name ‘Ape’ should be explained. Jono calls Terry ‘Ape’ because of his impressive size and strength. ‘Ape’ gave the book a balance that said to me, “I thought of all the bases,” and it works very well. Traditional action and gun toting action are two different things and work together very well in this book. The nasties sometimes need a kick up the ass to get them to give up.

About the nasties! There are Orcs, Goblins, creatures of the night, and the kind of thing you would never want to meet in a dark alley–that is, unless you had a Glock to back you up! Joey writes with great description about the monsters his characters run across. These monsters aren’t created to do anything other than roar, be mean and get killed by Jono. I found it a relief to read a book that just pounded out action in this way.

What about the writing style? In the first person, you feel as though you are actually there. I began edging around as I enjoyed the action. The Dark Communion is a very addictive read in that way. You are immersed into the world of a hunter and as a reader the action is very easy to follow. This is one of those books you pull yourself away from and realise you read fifty pages without even realising it. The dialogue is traditional hardman fare including quips and one-liners, but is intelligent enough not to end up as an Arnie picture. Events, guns, creatures, and backstory are explained as though Jono Swyftt is talking to you over a beer at the local bar.

Overall, I think for a reader looking for a story–a really entertaining, action packed, immersing story– this is one to pick up. It isn’t overbearingly intellectual; it doesn’t give you insight into your past or present; it won’t save your marriage; but it will entertain you! Well done, Joey! This one is a stomper! Jono ain’t bloody cheap… but the price of this book is! Buy it now!

By Nick Wale

Read an interview with Joey on Novel Ideas here!