The difficult part of
turning an everyday man into an action hero, or in this case a junior
spy, is the transformation. There is a lot of training, changes in
attitude and awareness, oceans of knowledge that must be consumed and
skills internalized. In short, too much detail to really be able to
explain what you learned and did too anyone who has not been there.
The difficulty for a writer to describe the process of transformation
is just as difficult. It is a balancing act, spend to much time on
the change and it gets dull or bogged down in techno-babble, skimp on
the change and you might as well say, “And with a wave of his magic
wand James Bond created another fully trained, mission ready clone.”
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| No more beer for you Mr. Wolfe! |
S.L. Shelton has found a
middle ground that shows how Scoff Wolfe goes from Techno-geek to CIA
asset and more. There is a realness and rawness a visceral truth that
Shelton is able to describe to the reader, so that even when Scott is
kicking butt, dodging bullets, and fighting for his life, he still
believably, a real, regular guy.
The basic plot is Scott
has to rescue his kinda, sorta, ex-girlfriend, when right after they
have a fight she kidnapped. However this is no “lone man on a
mission” trope that we often see in action novels, Scott has a back
up computer team, unusual allies and a few converts to help. Standing
in the way, agents of The US Government, who thinks he shouldn't get
involved, and Russian and Serbian gangsters.
But to call it just a
rescue story, or pulp adventure, or coming of age story is to
absurdly and incorrectly pigeon-hole this book. The hero doesn't get
by on one liners and “just happened to be handy tools and weapons,”
nor is it a techo-geek's wet dream where despite being nearly blind
with-out glasses, allergic to air and everything else, as well as the social
skills of a rabid, incontinent, escapee from the loony bin, he still
gets the girl, it is, instead, a believable story about a normal guy who rises
to the occasion.
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| Waking Wolfe is not this at all |
Another skill that Shelton
has is tying together details that seem trivial in the beginning, but
you realize later on had to be there for the story to work, nothing
as clumsy as foreshadowing, but hints and clues that you do not
realize are there to be examined until you have passed them.
I will be buying the next
in the series and enjoyed this one thoroughly.
Available at Amazon
Waking Wolfe
Now
for updates on my stuff
The
Soulless Monk is just about ready to go to the publishers. I'm
thinking the release date will be around the end of the month. I'll
know more once it has been uploaded to Smashwords and Amazon.
Of
course, I'll need to do a bit of a blog tour to help publicize The
Soulless Monk, so if you have a blog and like getting traffic, let me
know when you have an opening and we'll do a post to remember.
Junior
Inquisitor remains available for just 2.99 and can be found here -
Amazon
- http://goo.gl/D6KrbX
Smashwords
- http://goo.gl/XsGgAC
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