Review by HannahsReads -- Devil in False Colors
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HannahsReads
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Review by HannahsReads -- Devil in False Colors
[Following is a volunteer review of "Devil in False Colors" by Jack Winnick.]
Devil in False Colors is the third book in Jack Winnick’s Lara and Uri series. Lara is an FBI agent working for the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Uri is a Mossad agent. Both agents are called to Los Angeles when a horrifying act of terrorism is committed at a Hebrew school. Lara and Uri team up again to track down the terrorist organization responsible for the first of many attacks on American lives.
It’s hard to describe a thriller without commenting on the fast-moving plot, which this book delivers for sure. I also enjoyed the relationship between Lara and Uri. The components of the setting throughout the book—everything from police procedures to locations of consuls to names of guns—are well researched and authentic. The author does a fantastic job supplying concrete descriptions to make even small details come to life. When Uri needs to escape through a locked door, the lock is described as “a Weiser 5-cylinder design, available everywhere.” This level of well-researched detail carries throughout the book, giving it a sharp sense of realism.
I genuinely enjoyed the thrilling pacing of this novel, but I strongly disliked several other aspects of the book. The premise that the FBI would send a Mossad agent undercover to infiltrate a group of radical Muslims on American soil seems highly unlikely; the FBI employs people of all races and religions and undoubtedly has trained Muslim agents who would be much better prepared for such tasks. I suspect the author’s obvious Islamophobia prevented him from considering such an option. This leads me to my main issue with the book, which is that the entire novel reinforces harmful racial and cultural stereotypes; the villains are such flat, two-dimensional characters that they become caricatures. The plot is predictable because it is based on those stereotypes.
A certain level of violence is to be expected in a thriller, but I would warn readers that this book contains multiple terrorist attacks, rape, and murder. It isn’t a spoiler to add that the novel opens with a scene of murdered children. The book also requires professional proofreading; missing words and punctuation marks are scattered throughout the entire text.
Because of both the number of typos and the dependence on stereotypes in this book, I give Devil in False Colors a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. This book is very much in the line of a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum style of thriller, and readers who like this genre may be able to look past these issues to enjoy the tense drama of the plot.
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Devil in False Colors
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Devil in False Colors is the third book in Jack Winnick’s Lara and Uri series. Lara is an FBI agent working for the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Uri is a Mossad agent. Both agents are called to Los Angeles when a horrifying act of terrorism is committed at a Hebrew school. Lara and Uri team up again to track down the terrorist organization responsible for the first of many attacks on American lives.
It’s hard to describe a thriller without commenting on the fast-moving plot, which this book delivers for sure. I also enjoyed the relationship between Lara and Uri. The components of the setting throughout the book—everything from police procedures to locations of consuls to names of guns—are well researched and authentic. The author does a fantastic job supplying concrete descriptions to make even small details come to life. When Uri needs to escape through a locked door, the lock is described as “a Weiser 5-cylinder design, available everywhere.” This level of well-researched detail carries throughout the book, giving it a sharp sense of realism.
I genuinely enjoyed the thrilling pacing of this novel, but I strongly disliked several other aspects of the book. The premise that the FBI would send a Mossad agent undercover to infiltrate a group of radical Muslims on American soil seems highly unlikely; the FBI employs people of all races and religions and undoubtedly has trained Muslim agents who would be much better prepared for such tasks. I suspect the author’s obvious Islamophobia prevented him from considering such an option. This leads me to my main issue with the book, which is that the entire novel reinforces harmful racial and cultural stereotypes; the villains are such flat, two-dimensional characters that they become caricatures. The plot is predictable because it is based on those stereotypes.
A certain level of violence is to be expected in a thriller, but I would warn readers that this book contains multiple terrorist attacks, rape, and murder. It isn’t a spoiler to add that the novel opens with a scene of murdered children. The book also requires professional proofreading; missing words and punctuation marks are scattered throughout the entire text.
Because of both the number of typos and the dependence on stereotypes in this book, I give Devil in False Colors a rating of 2 out of 4 stars. This book is very much in the line of a Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum style of thriller, and readers who like this genre may be able to look past these issues to enjoy the tense drama of the plot.
******
Devil in False Colors
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Commercial Property Made Easy by Chris Lang
