|
"The Vendetta Factor" continues Tim Smith's award- winning series featuring former CIA agent Nick Seven. After leaving the CIA, Seven settled down in Key Largo, Florida, where he runs a Gulf-front club with a gorgeous former co-worker from Barbados. When Seven does an innocent favor for his gambling friend Rock Moretti, he never dreamed he would become caught up between two mob families fighting for control of the lucrative Miami market, and a federal prosecutor with a personal agenda. Seven is a cynical, cool maverick with no desire to return to his former life of globe-trotting violence, but in "The Vendetta Factor" he must call upon skills from his past career to survive mounting pressure from both the mob and the law.
The Vendetta Factor
Tim Smith
PublishAmerica (2006)
ISBN 9781424141258
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (5/07)
From the first sentence of the prologue to the last sentence of the epilogue, Tim Smith takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride of plot twists, adventure, and suspense. “The Vendetta Factor” has all the ingredients of mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure, interlaced with humor and subtle satire.
Nick Seven, former CIA agent, now a club owner in Florida finds himself in the middle of a turf war between the Musante Family and Dominic Ferrone, heir to the Scarletti Family of New York. Ferrone wants to take over the Musante Family control of organized crime in the state of Florida. Justice prosecutor Michael Quinn has a private agenda, for personal power and promotion that adds another level of complication to Nick’s dilemma. Aided by his girlfriend Felicia, FBI agent Bob Teague, and Key Largo’s sheriff Ted Cain, Nick is drawn into a web of bloodshed, thugs, and ultimate revenge.
“The Vendetta Factor” has great movie potential. Smith is convincing in presenting insights into mafia thinking, their reasoning, their strategy, their motivation, and their lust for revenge, retaliation, and vengeance. The character Crisotto, “the Crease,” is described: “His weathered face told the entire story of a man who had lived a dangerous life on the fringe of civilized society.”
Smith’s characters are realistic. Nick is described this way, “He was never one who liked having to dance to someone else’s tune, and when that someone insisted he do so he naturally dug in his heels even harder.” Strong dialog keeps the reader on target with the many plot twists and scene changes. Word pictures and imagery of the locale are colorful and authentic. Descriptions of violence and sex are sometimes graphic.
Robert Parker and his Spencer series may have met his match in Tim Smith’s Nick Seven in the genre of mob and underworld revenge in “The Vendetta Factor.” Tim Smith gives the reader a strong storyline, well developed characters, entertaining dialog, with a suspense element that is compelling and addictive. A great read.
|
