Chimera

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Afghanistan veteran Jim Chapel has been enlisted in a new war. This time it's in his own backyard and even more deadly. A small band of fugitives escapes from a secret upstate New York military facility, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Each fugitive has a target, an innocent civilian, and will not stop until the target has been eliminated. Chapel, a wounded Special Forces veteran, is tasked with hunting this group of extremely deadly, genetically modified killers and unraveling the mystery behind their existence. But are the killers really rogues, or are they part of a sinister conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels?

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A bad romance novel disguised as an action thriller. submitted by eknapp on June 18, 2014, 8:44am Some mystery person in power uses a drone to break a team of genetically altered killers (chimeras) out of a super-top-secret prison camp in the New York state boonies, then instructs them to track and kill everyone involved in their creation. Jim Chapel, a one-armed desk jockey and former special ops captain, is drafted by the CIA and Department of Defense to kill the chimeras and save their intended victims.

David Wellington has written a romance novel masquerading as an action thriller. The hero spends most of the book distractedly mooning over the requisite beautiful scientist who starts tagging along in Act One--one of many unlikely plot points that Wellington does a piss poor job of justifying. Chapel just respects her strength and passion SO MUCH, could it be--dare he think it--true love? He's a firm believer in secrecy and national security but gosh darn it she just DESERVES to be told every high-level secret that he can think of because it's MORALLY RIGHT. Ugh.

Internal logic flies out the window over and over again. An example: a psychotic superkiller gleefully and easily takes down entire Seal teams, in public, kills every challenger and enjoys doing so; but when our one-armed hero confronts said superkiller alone in an empty house--affording him plenty of privacy for violence and butchery--he conveniently knocks Chapel down and runs away? This kind of thing keeps happening.

Wellington clumsily attempts a series of shocking twists à la Jeffrey Deaver or Lincoln Child. He is not good at it. I look forward to not reading the next installment.