|
Within twenty-four hours a nightmare will be unleashed that
could cause the death of untold millions and devastate a great
nation. It's plot being carried out by the unlikeliest of
allies. A powerful mole within the deepest reaches of U.S.
intelligence has secretly conscripted the very criminals he's
been charged with investigating - former IRA terrorists, Latino
and Asian gang members, Middle Eastern assassins and others
- creating one of the most insidious terrorist networks law
enforcement has yet to take down...
In
Operation Hell Gate, one man stands between the destroyers
and the death tide: Jack Bauer, lone wolf operative for America's
brand-new elite Counter Terrorist Unit. But he's three thousand
miles from the CTU command centre without backup in a strange
city, New York. He's been artfully set up and is being hunted
by the FBI for the murder of two of its agents.
Operation
Hell Gate is a pretty gripping adventure, based on the
characters of the 24 universe. While this is a great
read, and will certainly appeal to 24 fans, I did have
a few small issues with this book.
The
book opens with an explanation that CTU was started after
the 1993 World Trade Center attack. Anyone outside of America
will think that the CTU universe is separate to our own, that
the 2001 World Trade Center attacks have, for some reason,
being shifted forward in time to 1993. It would have been
a little more helpful if CTU's origins had been explained
a little better, and that they were not the same attacks as
11 September 2001. While American's will be aware of these
attacks, I doubt many other readers will have a clue what
happened in 1993.
Why
do authors always insist on picking out the most indigenous
sounding names when they write about characters from a foreign
land? Why
do they insist on making all Scottish characters have Christian
names like Jock? Or Welsh villains with the surname Mr Jones?
Is it so that the reader can instantly associate the character
with their birthplace? In these multicultural times, isn't
this a little patronising? Author Marc Cerasini falls into
the same trap here calling one of his villains Shamus and
another Liam. It's a bit of a cliché to use these names
for Irish characters. I suppose it could have been worse.
We could have had Paddy, Murphy (Oh! wait... there is one
of these!) or Patrick as well.
Another
problem with this series is the fact that, as all the stories
are going to be set before the first season of the TV show,
when a new character is introduced you know that before the
end of the book they will have been killed or left CTU (I
doubt that an author will have been given the green light
to create a new character that will run across the entire
span of this series). This then means that a lot of temporary
staff will be arriving at CTU, undertaking some specialist
task, and then leaving. As this book opened, a new character
was assigned to CTU and I was betting that she would be dead
by the end of the book (as it happens, it was a lot sooner
than that).
But,
to be fair, this isn't an overly annoying problem. It wouldn't
have mattered when this book was set, it's very unusual for
a novel based on a TV series to introduce new characters that
will still be there when the next book is published. It's
pretty formulaic that the authors must leave the universe
in pretty much the same shape at the end of the book as it
was at the start.
Cerasini
also seemed at a bit of loss with what to do with Tony Almeida
- there's a bit of a redundant section where he ventures out
of CTU. Also Milo Pressman has a very unhealthy relationship
with his girlfriend. I can't remember whether this was ever
hinted at in the first series, but his partner's constant
insecure phone calls really started to get annoying after
a while. Surely this should have been cleaned up outside of
CTU, and taking a phone call while in the middle of a crisis
was a little silly.
From
my above ramblings, you'd probably get the impression that
I didn't really enjoy this book. On the contrary, it's a great
read. Cerasini has managed to write a believable story under
very difficult writing constraints (that the events must chart
a 24 hour time period, and that several of the characters
have already met a sticky end in the TV series).
I
also loved the fact that an incident in the opening chapters
of the book, which seemed like a bit of sloppy writing, was
actually revealed later to be something much more sinister.
When I first read the events that led to the plane with Bauer
and his prisoner being shot out of the sky, I really thought
this was a terrible piece of narrative. Why would someone
deliberately shoot down a plane in an attempt to rescue a
fellow criminal? The chances were that the plane would have
gone up in flames and all onboard would have perished. However,
later in the book this rather odd rescue attempt is explained
in much more detail (when a plot to shoot down another plane
is being formulated) and it does make sense.
At
the end of the day, this is a good solid read (despite my
anal complaints) which will keep fans happy while they are
waiting for another season of 24 to materialise.
Pete
Boomer
Buy
this item online
We
compare prices online so you get the cheapest
deal! Click on the logo of the desired store
below to purchase this item.
|
|
|
£5.59
(Amazon.co.uk) |
| |
|
|
|
£6.99
(Countrybookshop.co.uk) |
| |
|
|
|
£6.79
(Thehut.com) |
All prices correct at time of going to press.
|
|
