PUBLISHED: December 4, 2017
WAR & MILITARY ACTION,
ESPIONAGE THRILLER,
ACTION THRILLER
KEEP THE BODY BAGS HANDY!
Assassin Mitch Herron is doing what he does best, and that’s killing bad guys. In fact, he’s so good at it that he keeps a running tally so that he doesn’t mess up the body count. In the middle of a clean-up on aisle nine, an unanticipated blow to the back of his head has him wondering, “Who turned out the lights?” It also reduces his destructive power to that of a sock puppet, but not for long. He soon wakes to the sight of Mike Freeman, a nattily-attired leader of a fanatical sect intent on committing an act of bioterrorism. The problem? Herron is just as intent on stopping him … hence the mowing down of his underlings. Now I know it sounds weird, but Freeman seems to object to Herron’s permanently eliminating members of his organization and is about to repay the favor in his own inimitable way. Before Herron knows it, a syringe filled with an unknown substance is injected into his arm, and even without a scorecard, he knows he’s on the losing end of that battle. Luckily, he’s an optimist and knows that a battle is not a war and so he enlists the aid of Erica Kearns, a specialist in highly contagious pathogens to figure out what is circulating in his system. It turns out to be a doozy of a biohazard … one so virulent that it was thought to be an urban legend called The Omega Strain. A rose by any other name would be just as deadly and Herron has exactly four days to stop the ticking time bomb gestating in his body. With nothing left to lose, Kearns and Herron go looking for a cure, one that Herron hopes will turn the big bad strain into nothing worse than a seasonal cold.
If you’re one of those thousands of readers who love nothing more than a non-stop action thriller set against the background of a world-ending calamity, THE OMEGA STRAIN is for you! Written with a take-no-prisoner approach, author Steve P. Vincent does a masterful job of keeping us turning pages and trying to figure out what comes next. We are not disappointed because the twists and turns abound fueling the need for more. Think of it as engorging on a Thanksgiving dinner that never ends. But it’s here that I insert a WARNING that should be heeded, and the ditty goes something like this: Get your snacks ready “before” you begin reading because there is no downtime allotted for you foraging for an edible food source. So collect everything you need before your eyeballs hit the page. I mean it. Now as for me and the wicked pace, the brutish velocity wore me out and I felt a little like I ran ten marathons by the end of this cautionary tale. However, the adrenaline rushes found at every step of the way in this action thriller made the ride more than worthwhile … but another thing about the author.
Another one of Steve P. Vincent’s idiosyncrasies will please those readers always complaining about too much atmosphere. You know, those lush boring passages that go on f-o-r-e-v-e-r and brim over with childish emotions, and exacting descriptions about everything you never needed to know about a character’s life. You won’t find any of that Gothic digressive stuff sullying Vincent’s pages. For instance when Eric Kearns is introduced, she’s described as “attractive.” Yup, that’s it! Attractive. No unnecessary five-foot-seven-inches, one-hundred-twenty-pounds … three arms with a tawny mane of hair that resembles Pike’s Peak when she wakes up in the morning … I mean, do we really need to know that? So by the author stopping short and doing a little self-editing in keying in “attractive,” we readers immediately fill in the blanks with our own vision of what Dr. Kearns would look like if she had been described. Clever device, and what can I say except that it works.
Ultimately the terseness of language and economy of words combine to enhance the storyline. The plot well-thought out, we understand the dangers as do the characters. In fact, since we are engaged early on, we’re totally vested in this drama and cheering Herron on in hopes he prevails in outwitting these thugs. Definitely an immersive experience that becomes like watching your favorite sports team battle for supremacy. With no holding back, I totally and whole-heartedly recommend THE OMEGA STRAIN and am giving it FIVE STARS and a spinning heel kick to the groin! Congrats to Steve P. Vincent for creating such a likable destructive kind of guy!
