Extinction Machine

Another great read by Mayberry. Spoiler alert for those who believe in spoilers.

This one starts with the Captain Joe Ledger and Echo squad of the DMS in Wolf Trap, Virginia. They are at Shelton Aeoronatics. They are doing legwork, tracking down cyberterrorists since there have been many cyber attacks directed at the defense industry in the last few months.

They find those working there in pieces. Pieces on the floor, the walls and the ceiling.

They also find two men who say they are Federal Agents. Two men who turn out to be way more than they appear to be. Two men who have a gun no one has ever seen before and silk thin Kevlar and muscle enhancers to boot.

So begins another fine read.

This one has Joe, Joe’s Military War Dog Ghost, Church, Rudy, a POTUS kidnapped from the WH, the Majestic 3, a man named Tull, another man named Aldo, a man named Bones, another man named Shelton, murder, attempted murder, a plot by the Majestic 3, a woman named Junie Flynn, a Joe Leger who has been framed, a Black Book, VP Collins who becomes the acting POTUS, a Collins who does his best to dismantle the DMS, the destruction of the Warehouse, dead friends, the Chinese, a flying T craft, the owners of the intel for that craft, threats, a knock down drag out fight, enemies, friends and Joe Ledger and the DMS in a fight for their lives.

Five Stars

Like all of Jonathon Maberry’s Joe Ledger stories you’ll have to hang on for a ride that never slows down. Ledger and the DMS have faced zombies, super plagues, genetically enhanced soldiers and vampires. Now they face a possible threat from outer space and inner space. Aliens are real and the weapons race is one far larger than we ever suspected.

The President, impossibly, is kidnapped from the Whitehouse right under the nose of all his Secret Service guys and the only evidence left behind is crop circle symbolizing PI. The Vice President (never a friend of Church) is moved up and takes the opportunity to attempt a shut down of Church and the DMS and take over Mindreader. Joe Ledger is accused of being a traitor and the full force of the government is turned against the good guys. Ledger and all of the DMS are not only pursued by the government, but by the Shadow government and their enforcers the “Closers” (read “Men in Black” on steroids)armed with weapons, armor and training that is quite literally “out of this world”.

Like every one of the Joe ledger stories, author Jonathon Maberry manages to transform improbable science into believable science and pulls the reader right in. All the urban legends surrounding alien craft, Majestic, Area 51 and alien hybrids are given full reign in this story and Maberry treats it with respect.

This is the biggest, most over-the-top Ledger story yet, and I had a ball! I started reading it the morning after it dropped onto my Kindle and finished that same night. If you haven’t read Joe Ledger yet, read this one, then read them all. He’s a cross between Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne with wisecracking internal and external dialog that will highly satisfy fans of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser.

Can’t wait for the new one!

Maberry’s winning combo of likeable characters, snappy dialogue, and high tension moments guarantees a good time, EVERY time.

At its core this is “good guy vs bad guy” stuff. The good guys will win, but they’ll go through hell in the process. By the time they come through, Joe, “Bunny” and “Top” will feel like friends. And Mr. Church, for all his mystery and ambiguity, is someone you’d definitely like on your side.

I call on “Echo Team” whenever I’m in danger of overdosing on too much serious, heavy, overwrought, dark and/or head-scratching, “important” “literature” (see: “Olive Kitteridge”, anything by Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy (esp Cormac McCarthy) “The Goldfinch”, most “memoirs” (see “Wild”) and a lot of contemporary fiction). Joe and the guys are the perfect antidote to all of that.

As long as Maberry keeps writing them, I’ll keep buying them.

HOOAH!

Maberry’s even included the radio show COAST TO COAST in addition to Roswell. What’s not to like?

Ledger has fought vampires, zombies, genetic mutants, you name it. So what’s next for Joe Ledger and the Echo Team you ask? Aliens, of course! Maberry cleverly blends Area 51, Roswell, and numerous other UFO crashes which I for one had never heard of. I didn’t take the time to check if those particular crashes existed since I was too engrossed to interrupt my reading. It starts with the President being kidnapped and escalates to a demonstration of the latest in aircraft…a race to duplicate an alien craft by countries and/or agencies who have been picking up pieces from all of the crash sites over the years. Junie is an expert on UFOs and claims to know the location of the Black Book which has information on the UFOs. EXTINCTION MACHINE pits Mister Church against Howard Shelton, a guy with ultra-deep pockets. He has been hacking into Church’s Mind Reader computer. To add to Church’s problem, Vice President Collins has assumed the presidency with the disappearance of the President. Collin’s wants Church’s organization dismantled and Joe arrested. As with previous books in the series, Maberry puts Ledger in continuous peril. Ledger makes Jack Bauer look like Little Bo Beep. As usual, Ledger and what’s left of his Echo Team have to dust themselves off and get ready for the next villain. A great read. Maberry rarely disappoints.

The Joe Ledger series has done zombies, super soldiers and vampires and this time round it does aliens. Except the aliens don’t actually ever appear. It’s a story where aliens exist but it’s more about the conspiracy side of things.

The president appears to have been abducted by aliens. There’s a global arms race as nations across the world try to use alien technology to build weapons. Plus there’s cyber attacks and Joe Ledger seems to being targeted personally. Just an ordinary day for the DMS…

This felt a lot more multi-layered than some of the other books in the series. Usually we pretty much just get what Joe is up to (fighting lots of bad guys) and what the big bad guys are up to but here there are more angles. It’s also very much a DMS operation rather than simply a Joe Ledger operation- everyone is involved and the scale is huge.

There’s something of an X-File feel to it, the massive conspiracy that the government is keeping the existence of aliens quiet (and building weapons from their technology). What I really liked about it is that there was lots of factual information packed into the conspiracy and that meant it was hard to tell where the facts end and the fiction begins. Maberry always does a really good job at making his outrageous plot lines as realistic as he possibly can.

The book sees lots more of Bug, because there’s lots of research to be doing, Mr. Church showing a side of him we haven’t really seen before and Ledger really being pushed to the limit. It has a particularly James Bond feel to it as times, especially when Ledger confronts the ‘super-villain’ in his house towards the end. Plus, there’s an interesting new female character- although you can probably guess where that plot line is going.

My one reservation is bringing aliens into the DMS world. Everything in the series has been very science based, which is why the zombies and the vampires worked within it. The trouble is aliens are not supernatural and therefore can’t be given a different science edge. It just seems a bit wrong to have aliens, especially this far into the series where it changes the tone a little. That said, I am really pleased that Maberry never had the aliens appear in person and ensured it was a very human story, just like in the previous books.

A slightly different direction for the series but one that I thought worked really well, despite my initial doubts about the concept. I would go as far as to say my favorite Joe Ledger book so far.

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