Staff Sergeant Hadassah “Haddy” Abrams, trained by the Israel Defence Force, is racked by existential despair and is contemplating suicide. High up in the Hadhramaut mountains of Yemen she waits in a sniper’s nest alongside her spotter, and best friend, Sergeant Shira Alian. In a tented village in the distance, Al Qaeda mastermind Anisur Salam is preparing for a wedding. With a record-setting shot Abrams takes out the terrorist. The consequences of her action result in Abrams now being targeted by X, an evil Eastern European oligarch with his mind set on nuclear annihilation. Abrams wants to eliminate X but to do so she must work with New York City police detective Wolf James. And James is haunted by the memory of a mysterious woman he once saw whilst climbing a mountain. Was their ultimate collaboration pre-destined?
From its opening chapter, Bruce Farmer’s BLOOD SAPPHIRE’S REVENGE is relentlessly dramatic and the debut author does exceptionally well in maintaining the pace of the action and intrigue throughout the novel. His protagonist Abrams’ is well developed and the slow reveal of her traumatic past is skillfully handled with a blend of interior monologue and believable interactions with her buddy Alian. In counterpoint to Abrams’ nuanced character, the monstrous X is rather more cartoonish. He lives in a Bond villain-esque lair surrounded by objet d’art and a foul mouthed parrot. Indeed, so exaggerated is X’s villainy that one scene finds him eating cubes of beef from a golden skull whilst wearing a mask of the Hindu goddess of destruction Kali and berating his sidekicks and acolytes as he develops his plans to destroy Jerusalem with nuclear bombs. Though, like this scene, much of BLOOD SAPPHIRE’S REVENGE is over the top and skirts credulity it is never less than entertaining.
Sometimes Farmer slips into overly factual information about weaponry. There is more detail given to the McMillan TAC .50-caliber rifle used in the opening sequence than to some of the supporting characters who appear later in the book. This fetishization of hardware frequently occurs in military thrillers and is often employed by unskilled writers who believe it lends verisimilitude to their work. Farmer is a good enough writer to be able to do away with the military fiction clichés. His characters are believable, at least within the rather exaggerated world in which he has placed them, and his scene setting is exacting, precise and even poetic in places.
With a central premise of a globe-trotting duel between a sophisticated and complex female sniper and a cartoonishly monstrous villain, Bruce Farmer’s BLOOD SAPPHIRE’S REVENGE is a top notch action thriller that is both compelling and highly entertaining.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader