Former Marine aviator Joe Weber has tapped into his experience and expertise to write, DefCon One, an engrossing military thriller. In this all-too-close-home novel, Russia has a new secretary-general who's bent on returning the former USSR to its standing among world superpowers. That plan begins with a first-strike nuclear attack against the United States.

Ok, the book is a little outdated with its 1980s setting, but the reader will quickly forget that as he or she moves through the believable and gripping story. As the Soviets begin to amp up their military presence in both the Pacific and Atlantic regions, US military leaders and the president are faced with a no-win possibility. Negotiations have broken off and it may come down to the information that CIA mole Steve Wickham can smuggle back out to the White House. Can Wickham get that important message to the president before armageddon?

Weber's writing style is comparable to that of Tom Clancy in DefCon One. He's able to showcase the arsenal of weapons and delivery methods without burying the reader in technical jargon. There's even a glossary in the back of the book to help the reader with acronyms and military references.

I'm not a huge fan of military thrillers, but after reading DefCon One, I just might become one. ( )

A good plot flawed by unskilled writing.

Weber's basic storyline is one we're all familiar with: US vs USSR/Russia, cold war, escalating tensions, nuclear threats, Russians are evil etc etc. It's been done a million times before and it'll probably be done a million more.

In addition to the unoriginal concept: There were was too much in the way of extraneous details - specifically numbers (the 70,000 pound plane took off! etc), military chatter - whole conversations of attack plans with pilots ("the Texaco is airborne, two-three-zero for one-ten, angels two-six" and so forth), and holy crap the amount of characters and locations! Multiple subs, multiple carriers, multiple fighter pilot pairs, the Kremlin, the White House, and so forth. For the life of me I could not name you more than two or three of the like 60-something people named and "featured" for three pages here and five there.

That said, he had a decent take on the premise, and he did well at building the tension, as well as pulling off the ending. While frustrated at the aforementioned flaws, I still sped through much of the novel, anxiously awaiting the outcome. At the end, I wasn't disappointed. ( )

First edition very fine

2.5