This book is another adventure of Horace Chase, still, even if you’re not into the series, you can understand the story and the motives of the characters. I especially like how the other characters are slowly introduced. The story moves back and forth, there are a lot of twists and turns, sometimes the results of old actions come up. The ending is quite a surprise.
If you’re into spy stories I recommend both this particular book and the series.
Disclaimer: I received this book as a LibraryThing.com giveaway in exchange for a review. ( )

Horace Chase, ex-soldier with really talented friends, finds out he has a son he never knew about. There are so many story-lines at the beginning of this book that I had to start of list of who belongs to whom. His son is accused of killing a cadet at the Citadel, in view of three other boys, all of whom have rich important fathers. So the son disappears with a friend of his Grandmother. The plot thickens with a land take-over deal, the rich and powerful of South Carolina, and a psychopathic son of one of them jockeying to will it all.

Add in a secret government dark ops that all have back story lines, and it becomes a pretty intricate story with everyone seeming to betray everyone else. Hmmm. This sounds like a bad review. However once I got the people straight, I really couldn't put it down until I was done with it. It's exciting and moves along very quickly. I would recommend it! I received this book as part of the Early Reviewers program. ( )

Chasing the Son by Bob Mayer is a novel set on the South Carolina coast. Horace Chase has found out he has a son that he never knew about. The girl had found out she was pregnant after he left for West Point and her father sent her off to live with her mother in Oklahoma. She was waving a gun around as they were confronting her and another old nemesis on a Caribbean island when she told him about the kid, but his backup shot her before he found out more.

This and several other seemingly unrelated stories start off the novel. A spy parachuting into Russia is captured because her mission was blown. A part of the old ruling class of Charleston is having someone investigate her grandson's murder at the Military Institute, an academy in Charleston that the sons of the ruling class of South Carolina have attended since before the Civil War. Political intrigue over a causeway that the Senator from South Carolina has included in a bill. The causeway being included is not general knowledge at the time. Several groups are battling to get ownership of the island before the information over the causeway is released.

This story follows on from several earlier stories in the series that I had not read. It took a while to get familiar with the characters and back stories on each of them from the earlier stories. That is the only drawback to the novel. This made it slow to get started for me. After enough of the back story and the various story lines started getting tied together, this became a very good story. ( )

Rather confusing book. Who are these people? What does The Citadel really have to do with the plot? What are the goals of the players and why do they seem to be constantly changing? Writing is pretty good, not too many implausibilities. 3rd book in a series, so fairly popular. ( )

The richest and most powerful woman in Charleston, South Carolina, who is hell bent on revenge, hires an ex-military investigator to track down the father of the man who she believes killed her son. The father, Horace Chase, along with his former ops team, has just discovered the existence of his son, and is now committed to finding and protecting him. But treachery lurks behind every corner and no one is who they appear to be.

Based upon the cover, I had thought that this would be a straight-forward action book – an airport read with the typical unlikeable bad guys and the former covert ops good guys (who the reader can identify with and hope they survive this mess). Instead, this is a fairly complex plot with bad guys who are so unlikeable that it stretches the imagination, and good guys who I didn’t think were particularly likeable either.

The story digresses constantly, which tended to pull the reader out of the action, and there is way too much background information and unrelated historical facts that are thrown into the mix, making it a somewhat ponderous read. Imagine James Michener writing in the action genre.

Some readers will undoubtedly enjoy this book and I wouldn’t discourage you from giving it a try, but it just didn’t capture my attention. I would have preferred it had the author stuck with moving the story forward so that I wasn’t tempted to scan dozens of pages to return to the story at hand.

Note: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for agreeing to provide a fair and unbiased review. I have never met the author, nor do I know him personally. ( )