Toni

Book #9, in the John Wells series

After book # 8, I needed to take a long break from this series in fact it has been over 4 ½ years since I read “The Counterfeit”, why did I wait so long to get to “Twelve Days” ….I really had enough with problems between the US and Iran, this series was getting stale to me….I finally had to put it on my read shelf once and for all so here I am with my thoughts…..

“Twelve Days”, starts where the prequel left us. If you pick up this series here, no worries, there is a lot of information dumps for the new readers to catch up, although I recommend you read the previous installments first. This series is built around John Wells, an American intelligence operative and the main focus is a countdown to battle between the US and Iran. 

It opens with a bag. A shoulder –fired rocket brings down a passenger jet. Iran is suspected to be behind this tragedy. The fictional US president has then decided that Iran has a bomb and has ordered strikes against the country, given 12 days to come clean…but Iran doesn’t really have the bomb…. So what then… our super-human goes through a series of adventures and misadventures to save the day and at times he does entertain us.

Unfortunately, this story tends to meander way too much. A good part is essentially recaps of the previous books. It seems the author was struggling to fill the pages to give us the action we came to expect. Wells is all over the place he jumps from the Middle East, to Russia, to South Africa and to the US while battling his own government which is convinced the evidence against Iran is solid. What a conspiracy theory….12 days countdown till the last hour… can this scenario be possible? No it sounds unrealistic/unbelievable for a government to do this….or could this happen someday….or could a third party as suggested in this plot be behind this kind of conspiracy…..

I had a hard time staying with this book. It took way to long, not until half way through before the author gets going from there finally the story picks up and the plot has some spring into it. Most action scenes are bland some are captivating but nothing original comes out and things drags on and on and on…..finally Wells save the day and the world is a better place for it….haha