Bundu Reviews

Brad Thor is another new author for me and I kicked off reading his book “The First Commandment”.

The book features special agent Scot Harvarth, a former Navy SEAL and general bad-ass who appears to be a repeat character from other Thor books.

The story kicks off with a number of high-profile and very dangerous prisoners being secretly released from Guantanamo Bay under mysterious circumstances.

Suddenly Harvarth finds the people around him being killed in extremely brutal ways and he starts investigating and finds that the President of the United States has been complicit in the release of these prisoners which might tie into the attacks on him and his friends and family.

When Harvarth says he wants to go after the bad guys, the president makes it clear that he won’t permit it which means a pissed of Harvarth naturally goes looking for trouble while evading the cream of the US security services.

This was one of those books which was passable without being thrilling. If you want an armchair read to pass the time then you could do worse than this one but you know when you watch one of those really bad episodes of CSI Miami and the heroes are just too good? Well this book gives you a few moments like that!

We rated the book a 3 out of 5 and you can buy this book from online retailer Loot for R68.

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This was a good little book and I can thoroughly recommend it for anybody looking for a cracking fast-paced thriller.

I had never read Lisa Gardner before today but after a bit of surfing around the Amazon store I found “The Perfect Husband” and downloaded it to my Kindle. (Don’t forget – you can buy your Kindle from Digital Planet in South Africa). Five hours later I had finished all 400 pages of the book – it’s a goodie!

When Jim Beckett swept Tess of her feet, fresh out of high school she thought she had the perfect man. A decorated cop, an upstanding member of the community and then the father of her daughter, Tess could find little to fault… that is until she finds out that she has been married to a brutal serial killer.

After turning the tables on him and getting him arrested, she thinks her life can now get back on track. That is until she hears of his escape from prison.

Not trusting the police to protect her, she turns to a drunken mercenary who comes highly recommended. Sparks fly between the two and when Jim grabs Tess’ daughter there is going to be held to pay and the only question is who is going to be left standing…

This is a really good little book and fantastic value for money. I rated it a four out of five and reckon it was one of the better thrillers I have read in a while.

You can buy the book online from retailer Loot for R51 or from Kalahari.Net by clicking here or on the book cover

This is the follow-up book by Flynn to the high-paced “Extreme Measures”.

A terrorist attack has gone off in the US with multiple bombs leaving 185 people dead and if it hadn’t been for some smart work by counter-terrorism agents Mitch Rapp and Mike Nash, the tally could have been much higher.

The US President is seething and he has given Rapp and Nash carte blanche to find the perpetrators and deal with them once and for all. They are also still hot on the trail of three of the terrorists who continue to wreak havoc across the US as they try to make their escape.

But hunting terrorists has taken its toll on Nash and he is starting to crack under the pressure leaving Rapp having to play a balancing act to keep the team together, especially when it becomes obvious that the terrorists might have one last point to prove.

This was a great read – fast-paced and good character development. Probably do best to get the Extreme Measures book first.

You can buy this book online from retailer Loot for R96 (paperback) or from Kalahari.Net by clicking here or on the book cover above.

This is the follow-up to No Mercy and once again brings millionaire hostage rescue expert  Jonathan Grave into play.

Grave is looking for two kids who have been kidnapped  by some very unpleasant people who are having their strings pulled by  a high-profile US senator.

A decent paced thriller but not as strong as the first book. Dunno I just found it a little over the top and the body count clocks up which makes it a little unrealistic. But if you are looking for a bit of brain-dead entertainment then this one is not too bad.

Not as good as the first book and rated it a 3 out of 5.

You can buy the book online from retailer Loot for R59 or you can buy from Kalahari.net by clicking here or on the book cover above.

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If you ever want to pass a few hours with a crime thriller then you can’t go too far wrong with a Jack Reacher novel.

The former millitary police (MP) commander who now leads the life of a nomad wandering around the US, with just the shirt on his back, seems to have a nose for trouble.

When the bus he is travelling on is involved in an accident in freezing conditions in South Dakota, he finds himself snowed in and spending a few extra days in a small prison town.

Reacher finds himself being roped in to protect a state witness who is under pressure from a biker / drug gang who are looking to silence her. The problem is that the biker gang has a contact within the police and then hit may very well come from the people tasked with protecting her.

Not a bad read – rated it a 3 out 5 and there is an interesting twist at the end of the book which might just stun Jack Reacher fans…

You can buy the book online from Loot for R224 or you can get it through Kalahari by clicking here or on the book cover above.

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This was the first book by this author and I was quite impressed.

If you like Harlan Coben then I think you will find John Gilstrap very similar kind of read. Maybe less of the witty one-liners but the characters themselves and the story gives you a very similar feel.

 The key character in the Gilstrap novels is a high-tech private security guy by the name of Jonathan Grave. The son of a former mob boss, a highly decorated soldier and now a very wealthy owner of a security firm with connections to the CIA, Grave is the guy you turn to when the situation calls for something a little different.

But Grave operates by his own rules and when a hostage rescue goes wrong and three hostage takers end up dead, local law enforcement wants answers.

While Grave and his people are trying to clean up the mess, they find themselves dragged into a hunt for biological weapons and dealing with increasingly unsavoury people.

Rated the book a 3 and a half out of 5. Nice read, nice pace, maybe a little over the top in places but all in all I enjoyed it.

You can buy the book online from retailer Loot for just R60 (you read right!) or from Kalahari.Net by clicking here or on the book cover above.

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This is probably the best crime thriller I have read this year and the fact that it is written by a South African gives me an absolute kick. We really do produce top quality talent.

For those who don’t know Meyers’ books, many of them centre around detective Benny Griessel, a “dinosaur” of the old South African Police Service (SAPS). He drinks too much, is losing his wife and his finding it increasingly difficult to know where an aging white inspector is supposed to fit in to the new multi-cultural police ranks.

But that doesn’t mean that his years of experience have been forgotten and increasingly he finds himself mentoring up and coming new detectives with a mixture of results.

In “Thirteen Hours” he is stretched to his limits when a young American girl is found in Cape Town with her throat slit. Even more chilling is that video surveillance footage indicates that she was one of two girls being pursued by a group of vicious killers… the question is where is the other girl and why is she afraid to come to the police?

Running in parallel to this story is the curious death of a Afrikaans music promoter where the case just doesn’t add up to the evidence on hand.

The tension that one feels as the story unfolds is intense. Why is this girl running? Is is a drug deal gone bad or is there something more sinister?

With the killers right on her shoulder from the start of the book to the end, it is on a knife-edge and the climax is equally impressive.

Title: Thirteen Hours
Author: Deon Meyer
ISBN: 978-0-340-95359-4

If you are going to buy one crime thriller this year then Meyers’ Thirteen Hours is probably the best you are going to read. We rated a 4 and a half out 5 and would sincerely recommend it for our blog readers!

You can buy the book online in hardcover from Loot for R236 or you can click on the cover and go through to online retailer Kalahari and buy it there.

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My wife and I spent some time this evening trying to work out whether we enjoyed the latest offering from Harlan Coben – Caught.

There is no question it was a page-turner. I started it earlier today after downloading it to my kindle and it was finished by 4pm. I don’t know exactly what it was but this story was more about curiousity than necessarily a cracking plot.

The book starts with local do-gooder Dan Mercer being setup in a sting which would seem to indicate he was having an inappropriate relationship with a 13 year old boy. Mercer’s life is wrecked in a very public and humiliating manner on a sleaze TV show and his world falls apart… especially when it later appears that he may be implicated in other cases.

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Being interested in financial markets, I have been meaning to read the Barry Sergeant book – Brett Kebble – The Inside Story – for a while now. One of my colleagues gave me a copy and I just finished it this morning.

Have to say it was a bit of a mixed bag and if you have no interest in mining, the Kebbles or stockmarket investing then this book will just be one big question mark for you.

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As a useless piece of trivia before I get into my latest book review, I thought I’d let the Bundublog community know that I actually worked for Wessel Ebersohn at Succeed magazine in Parktown in another lifetime.

If you want a business which embraces entrepreneurship and a team culture then Wessels’ business is it.

Having worked for him before, I was keen to try his book out. If you can support South African authors and entrepreneurs then get out there and do it!

The story revolves around Abigail Bakula, a rising star in the Justice Department in South Africa. She receives a visit from a soldier who she met when she was much younger and had watched her parents brutally murdered. Now the soldier is looking to her for assistance – a number of his colleagues who had been involved in the raid which killed her parents are now being killed.

Over the last few years, on the 22nd of October a soldier dies and there are now just two surviving members… and the second one is locked up in South Africa’s most secure prison.

Tension continues to build as the soldier then goes misssing after coming to Bakula for help and suddenly it is a race against time as the 22nd draws steadily closer.

It really was a nice South African read – you recognised the places, the moods and the mannerisms of the characters. I found there were one or two gaps in the story which I battled to follow but I was speed reading so may have missed something in it.

The “gaps” as I saw them were not that noticeable that they detracted from a very handy crime thriller.

Title:  The October Killings

Author: Wessel Ebersohn

ISBN: 978-1-4152-0074-2

You can buy the book online from retailer Loot for R159 or if you click on the image of the book below you can buy it from Kalahari.Net

Rated the book a 4 out of 5 and would sincerely recommend it for anybody looking to support South African talent!