Dead Fall is a timely thriller with a bold story and unflinching portrayal of evil that runs rampant in the news headlines these days. It reminds us especially of how much the world needs real-life Scot Harvaths to fight for the oppressed.
Scot Harvath is looking forward to taking some downtime with his fiancée when he’s pulled into a new mission, one that involves rescuing an American citizen from the war-ravaged Ukraine where she has been captured by a vicious and vile Russian mercenary group made up of the worst of humanity. Rushing against the clock, Harvath must navigate the war-torn landscape, battling enemy combatants at every turn to reach the American hostage before she is brutally murdered just as other Americans were before her. Meanwhile, FBI agents launch an investigation Stateside to investigate the alleged suicide of a man known for speaking vehemently against Russian tyranny, lending to a dangerous theory that Russians have infiltrated the border in a dangerous manner.
Dead Fall benefits immensely from Thor’s unabashed depiction of the war crimes happening in Ukraine, setting a treacherous stage for Harvath. Even though the hardened operative has been through hell and back, Thor goes into enough details of the barbarity of the conflict that Harvath’s latest mission feels like his most dangerous yet, putting him in a position with no rescuers but his haphazard team of volunteers that Harvath must lead into battle with limited weaponry and shrewd tactics to match the overwhelming enemy forces. As such, there’s a whole barrage of fantastic action sequences that go 0-100 in the blink of an eye. The shootouts feel grounded and intense with the palpable anxiety of battling ambushes, crawling to avoid snipers, and of course Harvath being a pure badass as he effectively becomes a one-man army against Russian baddies.
While Harvath advances the story with action, the FBI plot takes readers on a mole hunt that ultimately ties into a larger picture involving Harvath’s fiancée, the full execution being an ingenious staging of tying together the complete narrative. It adds a cerebral balance to the hard-hitting action that continues on throughout the whole thriller.
If you’re coming off high from the action-packed Extraction 2 and you need to read something that’s just as badass if not more and even more grounded, then Dead Fall is the definitive-thriller pick for you.
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