Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Athena Project-Brad Thor

The Athena Project
Brad Thor
Atria, Nov 23 2010, $27.99
ISBN: 9781439192955

Over twenty Americans along with numerous other nationalities were killed in a terrorist attack in Rome, Italy. Homeland Security makes it a priority to bring the people behind the deadly assault to justice anyway necessary. Delta Force assigns four top female agents (Gretchen Casey, Julie Ericsson, Megan Rhodes, and Alex Cooper) to capture the black market arms dealer Nino Bianchi who supplied the terrorists.

However, the quartet succeeds at their mission only to learn of a deadlier plot. At the same time of the abduction, a soldier in South America finds the horrific sight of human bones embedded in rocks in underground tunnels in the jungle. He is unaware that these are the remains of failed experiments to transport in time and place Nazi concentration camp victims as part of the top secret Nazi technological advancement approved by Hans Kammler during WWII. The Delta Force operatives follow the lead to Castle Zbiroh in the Czech Republic where radio waves are suppressed. However, clues take the operatives back to the United States where they learn of the American post WWII Operation Paperclip and increasingly fear The Kammler Device teleportation technology. They are stonewalled by their own government, which seems to want the Delta Force operatives from uncovering the truth below Denver International Airport and at Camp Hero in Long Island.

Updating the Philadelphia Experiment with real people, places and events, Brad Thor provides a fast-paced exhilarating thriller that never takes a breath once the two subplots converge (a few chapters into the high speed tale). Connecting dots that go back through the Communists to the Nazis, the four women try to prevent a disaster while an adversary follows similar clues but prefers collateral damage. Action-packed, the first full thriller of the Athena Project quartet is an entertaining winner.

Harriet Klausner

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