Rules of Engagement

April 1, 2019
Military thriller fans will find little new in Bruns and Olson’s capable first novel. A Russian criminal enterprise known as the Bratva is losing money on its arms dealing business, so its leadership hires a terrorist, Rafiq Roshed, who’s presently living and working in North Korea, to stir up trouble in the Far East to boost sales. Roshed, a psychopath with a grudge against the world because of the death of his beloved wife, is an expert in cyber warfare. He hacks into the computers of the Chinese, Japanese, and the American militaries, and begins pitting their respective forces against each other until WWIII looms. A team of cyber-genius midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., is assigned the job of finding the elusive Roshed and stopping the upcoming war. Bruns and Olson handle the action scenes well, but the surfeit of overly familiar characters and the shopworn plot will leave readers hoping that the authors will come up with something more original next time. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune.

April 15, 2019
Never mind North Korea's nuclear capabilities. In the latest thriller from former Navy men Bruns and Olson (Jihadi Apprentice, 2016, etc.), Kim Jong-un has the world's most dangerous cyberterrorist working for him--and the lethal hacker has America in his crosshairs. The terrorist is Rafiq Roshed, a rogue operative whose past feats include shutting down the power grid serving America's east coast and nearly detonating a nuclear device in Minneapolis. He is for the moment hiding out on a small island off the coast of North Korea. His master plan is to incite warfare among the U.S., China, and Japan by infecting their military networks. Under increasing threat as the cyber-controlled skirmishes intensify, America places its best hopes for survival on the skills of three exceptional midshipmen from the Naval Academy, including a tech prodigy who is a genius at "pattern rec." The action bounces in short chapters among Washington, D.C., and Pyongyang, Japan and Russia, Australia and Argentina. The terrorist, we learn, is an outcast who lost his family to the cyberwars and has a vendetta against the United States. Kim makes a brief, forgettable appearance (he likes California grapes). The unnamed, infrequently seen American president is also nondescript. But fans of the cyberwarfare genre will enjoy the novel's snappy pace, broad cast of characters, and timeliness. One reassuring takeaway is that U.S. networks are harder to crack than one might think. Bruns and Olson leave us hoping we don't have to find out how much harder. The authors consider the possible consequences of a cyberattack on America's military, to entertaining but unsettling effect.

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May 1, 2019
With their background in the U.S. Navy, both Bruns and Olson have the right stuff to create a realistic military tale. It begins with a cyberattack on a power plant, which causes chaos and fear on the East Coast. A year later, a known terrorist gains access to a computer virus that could decimate more than just the power grid. If he's successful, his scheme could ignite a large-scale war. The story line jumps between different countries to showcase the stakes, and tension builds as what appears to be an inevitable outcome draws closer. The large cast of characters tends to distance the reader, making it difficult to become emotionally invested in particular individuals; like the first novels of Tom Clancy, this one is more about plot and the methods used to neutralize the threat. Those aspects alone, however, should engage fans of military thrillers and have them looking for more from these knowledgeable authors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)