Breaking Cover

I don’t care much for high body count thrillers. The authors always ratchet up the tension too much and too artificially. Too many coincidences are allowed to get the hero both into and out of trouble, and the hero (or heroine, let’s be fair) always has time to get into some steamy sex between shootouts while on the run, preferably with someone he or she should not have trusted. (And anyone smart enough to have survived that far in the book would not have.)

So why did I like J.D. Rhoades’s Breaking Cover as much as I did? Maybe it’s because he doesn’t do any of that shit. The story is well=prepared and executed, and nothing happens that defies belief. The characters are realistically drawn and true to themselves, and the action—when it transpires—flies straight and true.

Maybe best of all, Rhoades is content to provide a satisfying ending, not undoing all his previous good work to contrive a happier one. Hollywood would probably change a few things at the end, why is one of the reasons I spend so little time at the movies anymore.

On the other hand, Breaking Cover would be a bitch to make a movie from, as much ground as it covers. Make a hell of a cable mini-series, though.