“Burke’s Revenge” by William Brown

Bob Burke, retired from the U.S. Army’s elite Delta Force, is now living near Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His home is called “Sherwood Forest,” and the estate comes complete with its own band of “merry men” – computer geeks, retired Special Ops soldiers like himself, his pregnant wife Linda and her daughter Elle. He remains chairman of a telecommunications company in Chicago, but he has put good people in charge of running its day-to-day operations. Life should be relatively quiet and serene.

Except this is Bob Burke, and “quiet” and “serenity” are two words that don’t associate with him. At a small college in nearby Fayetteville, a sociology professor named Henry Shaw and just returned from a trip to the Middle East. What no one but the FBI suspects is that Shaw has set up an ISIS cell, with members from both students in the college and soldiers at Fort Bragg. Shaw has become a Muslim, and is going to bring jihad to Fort Bragg.

To say that Burke’s Revenge, William Brown’s third Bob Burke suspense/thriller novel, is packed with action is to be guilty of gross understatement. From desert towns in Syria to the sleepy environs of Fayetteville, Brown stages more car bombings, killings, and explosions than a half-dozen similar novels combined. And the action bleeds authenticity, with descriptions of guns, knives, airplanes, and explosives so vivid and real that you know this is an author who knows what he’s writing about.

William Brown

Brown, the author of seven previous novels, has established himself as a master of military suspense, whether it’s World War II or the contemporary war against ISIS. He knows his military and how it operates, and he knows its politics, and how it operates. And he puts the knowledge of both to good use.

The more they understand, the more Burke and the people he’s working with realize that Shaw, and deadly as he is, may be just a side show. Three members of ISIS from the Middle East are also on the ground in the Fayetteville area, and what they are planning is worse than any car bomb or building explosion that Shaw dreams up. (I should point out that Shaw is a totally despicable villain, without any redeeming qualities, and it may cause me to look at sociology professors in an entirely different light.)

Burke’s Revenge snaps and crackles with action and excitement. It’s a wildly entertaining read.

Related - My reviews of Brown’s previous books:

Burke’s War 

Amongst My Enemies

Winner Lose All

The Undertaker

Aim True, My Brothers

Thursday at Noon

Burke’s Gamble

Top photograph of Fort Bragg by Jonas N. Jordan, U.S. Army Corp of Engineers Digital Visual Library via Wikimedia.

William Brown’s “Burke’s Gamble”

Bob Burke ostensibly runs a telecommunications company in Chicago. He’s celebrating three weeks being married when he gets a call – a former fellow Delta Force colleague is in trouble with a casino in Atlantic City. The casino is tied into the New York Mafia crime families. By the time Bob arrives in Atlantic City with $300,000 to pay off the debt, someone has tossed the colleague from a fifth-floor window.

It’s not nice to mess with Bob Burke. The casino sends three “security men” after Bob to Chicago to collect what’s owed. It’s stupid to mess with Burke a second time, as the three thugs soon discover.

At the colleague's funeral in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the casino’s payback is plotted out. And then the fun begins.

William Brown’s Burke’s Gamble is the second in the Bob Burke Action Thriller Series, the first being Burke’s War. The narrative occasionally goes longer than a page without concerted force being applied, but it’s rare. Action ripples across the story so fast that a close read is mandatory to keep track of how fast things move. The pace is wild and riveting.

William Brown

Prior to beginning the Bob Burke series, Brown write several action-packed suspense novels. All of them are exciting reads, but it’s with Burke that Brown has hit his stride. Deftly combining threads of big-stakes gambling, Mafia control, and special forces action with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, he weaves a highly entertaining story. A new wrinkle is added with the arrival of former special forces from the Netherlands and Germany whoa re now full-blown mercenaries, and a hunt for purloined gold artifacts stolen from the chaos of the war in Iraq.

Like I said, Burke’s Gamble is one wild story.

Related - My reviews of Brown’s previous books:

Burke’s War

Amongst My Enemies

Winner Lose All

The Undertaker

Aim True, My Brothers

Thursday at Noon

Photograph of Atlantic City by Tim Emerich via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

William Brown’s “Burke’s War”

Bob Burke heads a telecommunications company. He’s flying back to his home base of Chicago from Washington, D.C., where he learned that the Defense Department is chucking his company’s bid for a major work program in favor of a lesser known company. It could mean layoffs. He’s not in the best of moods, and trying to drown his problems with Scotch. As the plane comes in low for landing, he looks down from his window, and sees a man strangling a woman on a rooftop.

Bob Burke’s life is about to turn upside down.

That’s how Burke’s War by William Brown begins, and it never lets up. The flight attendant, the airport police and the local police all disbelieve his story. But Burke knows what he saw, and he’s rather relentless in pursuing what he believes was a murder.

Burke, a former special forces soldier in Afghanistan and Iraq, finds himself up against an estranged wife who’s determined to get control of the business; the head of a pharmaceutical company with a penchant for violent rape; the pharmaceutical company’s security; and part of the Chicago Mafia. People begin to die, including some close to Burke.

Burke declares war. Shootings and violence pile up.

If you like action and suspense, William Brown packs it into his stories. The reader hands on as events propel the narrative forward.

William Brown

Do I believe things like this could have in suburban America? No. Did that stop me from enjoying this story? Also no.

Brown is a storyteller. From the very beginning, the reader is wrapped into this unlikely of heroes, a young CEO trying to save his company. We gradually learn there’s more to this CEO than meets the eye. So do the bad guys. And there are a lot of bad guys.

Burke’s War is described as the first in a series. I can’t wait to see what the “telephone guy” gets up to next.

Related - My reviews of Brown’s previous books:

Amongst My Enemies

Winner Lose All

The Undertaker

Aim True, My Brothers

Thursday at Noon

Photograph of Chicago skyline (facing west toward Michigan Avenue) by Matt Hobbs via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.