"Only The Dead" by Jack Carr

Above: "Only the Dead," - Jack Carr - 564 pages. I completed reading this book today.

The Russian conspirators are confident of prevailing. Why? The US is culturally weak. Says a Russian conspirator, "While the Americans are fighting over their pronouns, digital passports, and a social credit system, we will change the world order."

Longest of Park City, UT based Jack Carr's James Reece series to date.

Book starts with Reece in a cold, dark special cell of the Florence Administrative Maximum Prison Facility in Colorado. At the end of the previous Reece novel, "In the Blood," Reece was apprehended at a friend's Montana cabin by federal agents for, ostensibly, being a suspect in the recent assassination of the US president.

In his cell, Reece, cold and unclothed, tries to keep his wits in the face of what seems to be an attempt to try to break him.

All is not well on the outside in a world depicted by Carr as much the same as that being experienced on the American and world scene today. America undergoes rampant inflation, and the world is on the brink of war. And here's a new wrinkle for Carr's series on James Reece: A secret cabal made up of Russians, Americans and Chinese seeks to wield ultimate power over the world. Where is Klaus Schwab when you need him?

After three months of incarceration, Reece is released from prison by a friendly CIA contact. He is told that he was framed for the assassination of the president. He learns that powerful forces (the cabal?) want him eliminated. His incarceration was a necessary act engineered by allies to throw his antagonists off his track.
Reece must figure out who wants him off the playing field and how it all connects the global conspiracy that stymied his father in a previous generation.

The global cabal, in this book led by three direct reports to the Russian president, seeks to set up an atomic bomb explosion off the coast of Israel. The blame for the bomb is to be placed on Iran. Purloined Iranian signature uranium will be used to make the bomb in Russia. Post explosion, Israel will have to attack Iran. The US will have to disengage from supporting the Ukraine War to back its ally, Israel. Russia benefits.

The Russian conspirators are confident of prevailing. Why? The US culturally is weak. Says a Russian conspirator, "While the Americans are fighting over their pronouns, digital passports, and a social credit system, we will change the world order."

Reece wonders if a letter left to him by his deceased father, accompanied by a safe deposit box key, is relates to the fact of his being targeted by unknown global forces. In the letter, Dad expresses his pride for his son's accomplishments as a Navy SEAL and regrets that he, as a dad, couldn't spend more time with Reece. Dad importunes Reece to follow up on the contents of the safe deposit box and warns, "powerful people and organizations will do anything to keep what's in that box from seeing the light of day."

And so, begins Reece's quest to finish the job started by his father.
Reece learns that his dad's old CIA friend, Bill Poe in Colorado, wants to see him. Reece visits Poe. Reece tells Poe of his quest to obtain the contents of the safe deposit box. Poe asks for more details. "Where is the key?" "Where is the safe deposit box?" Reece, having been admonished by his dad in the letter to "tell no one anything," temporizes. Poe gives Reece some contacts that might aid in his quest.

On two occasions, Reece fights off Russian hired assassins. Reece obtains the safe deposit box. Inside is proof of Vietnam War veterans being shipped off to Russia and information about the cabal. Reece upends the Russian atomic bomb plot and by defusing the bomb five kilometers off the coast of Israel at the last minute. With information from his father's safe deposit box, Reece inches towards the truth about the global cabal, including its traitor members in the US.
In the book's final chapter, Reece is back visiting Poe in the Colorado Rockies. The reasoning behind Poe's curiosity during Reece's first visit about what Reece knew and what he didn't know about the safe deposit box is now transparent as Poe, member of the global cabal, with Reece looking on, takes his own life.

Carr's reputation as a page turning thriller writer goes from strength to strength with "Only the Dead." Carr's narrative carries within a tutorial on world politics, geography and firearms. Recommend.