Operation Hail Storm

Marshall Hail was a husband, a father, a Physics Nobel prize winner and industrial billionaire. But when Hail's family was killed in a terrorist attack, he became a predator and redirected his vast industrial assets toward one goal, removing every person on the FBI's Top 10 Terrorist list. With the help of his MIT colleagues, Hail designed and built a devastating arsenal of attack drones of all shapes and sizes that are flown by the nation's best young gamers. The world will come to realize that Marshall Hail possesses the capability of getting to anyone, anywhere, at any time, unleashing an operation so disturbing that the CIA has named it Operation Hail Storm.

Operation Hail Storm (Techno Thriller)

By Brett Arquette

Independent Publishing Platform

ISBN #978-1365452543

354 Pages

Price $17.72 (Paperback)

Price $9.99 (Kindle)

Rating 3-Stars

I was given a free PDF of this book and asked by the author to give an honest review. Billionaire Marshall Hail turns his vast wealth into a means of fighting terrorist after his wife and daughters are killed. Using his many cargo ships as home bases, he turns Hail Nucleus, Hail Atom, Hail Electron, Hail Proton, and other ships into his battle stations. All have a Mission Center and Security Center, as well as living quarters, swimming pools, gyms, and entertainment for his personnel. They fly drones to kill the FBI’s Top 10 Terrorist list.

The novel was intelligently written, and the author appears knowledgeable in drone warfare. Unfortunately, I found the characters unrealistic, and the lack of real action bored me to tears. The techno is present, but the thriller is missing from the book. In the first fifty pages pirates attempt to attack their cargo ship. Hail and team turn this into a party with popcorn. They release several drones to frighten them, but the pirates seem un-phased and fire at the drones. The drones fire back, but in a non-lethal attack. It does force the pirates in the small boat to get some distance from the ship while their larger mother ship, loaded with a .50 caliber machine-gun, takes up the attack. This time Hail brings his super weapon to the forefront and blasts the mother ship after its crew jumps into the water, to be rescued by the men in the smaller boat. We get a page or two of description as the super weapon warms up. We get the impression that the poor pirates have no choice in what they do, and Hail doesn’t really want to harm them. He needs to wake up; the pirates will kill and take boats and cargo from anyone they attack. This is not a very good representation of a men’s action novel. Narrative concerning the drones goes on and on until I wanted to chuck the book.

I begged for something exciting to happen to kill the monotony, and to my relief the author introduced a beautiful femme fatale, a sexy CIA spy after a Russian arms dealer. She arranges a meeting in a hotel bar, and they end up in bed. We don’t see the sex, but instead read pages and pages about how this electronic gizmo works, or how something else works.

I did appreciate the lack of, or heavy use of, profanity and sex. The author does tell a clean story, and that’s appreciated. But I don’t think it does what the reader expects, and that, of course, was to be a true techno thriller. There is just too much detail to electronics, and of this and that, and other non-essential stuff, like how many steps from his room to the Mission Center, etc. There needed to be more tension and action. It does have its good points, and I hope readers will take a chance on it.

Tom Johnson,

Author of ASSIGNMENT: NINA FONTAYNE