Overall, I prefer Driving a Tacoma to Reading About One

The Russian - Ben Coes

Some days the willing suspension of disbelief goes only so far... and today was one of them. Well, actually, the last few days – even I couldn't read The Russian - Rob Tacoma Series, Book 1 in a single day. One of the main reasons I couldn't is that I had to keep stopping to puzzle through author Ben Coes' bizarre word choices and strange notions about science and everything else. 

Coes is the author of a slew of Dewey Andreas novels, none of which I've ever heard of, much less read. FWIW, Andreas makes a cameo appearance in the final chapter as a, to be quite frank, half-assed deus ex machina. More on that later. Coes' bio says he served under two presidents (an intern under Reagan and a speechwriter for a Bush I cabinet secretary). But we're here to talk about the book...

When the Russian mob assassinated a couple of highly-placed officials, the powers that be brought in a two-man CIA wet work team to retaliate. Half that team was dead before the ink was dry on the contract, thanks to a mole in the mix. Fortunately, the other half - super-operative Rob Tacoma – was up to the task. In keeping with the usual tropes, Tacoma proved to be the kind of guy that Delta Force and Seal Team members are afraid of. Think of an alpha male on steroids! Thank heavens he's on our side...

Tacoma works his way up the mafiyah chain of command to the top-level guy in the USA, splattering blood and brains whenever and wherever necessary. In the final showdown, he encounters The Russian himself, who – although up in years – proves nearly as indestructible as the twenty-something Tacoma. Unfortunately for Rob, however, Dewey Andreas shows up as backup and while the two are swapping jokes, the bad guy gets away – spoiler alert – after putting one of them in the hospital. Unfortunately, he lives...

Reading The Russian was a bit of a struggle, but not because the trope of super-human operative is rather overdone. I'm fine with Reacher, Orphan X, and a host of other alpha males. Alpha females too, for that matter. No, what made this one hard to read was some of Coes' bizarre word choices, among other factual failings. No, unlike that one guy who reviews every thriller at the River and bitches about inaccuracies with weapons, I'm more... cerebral. 

For instance, Tacoma has been out of the country on an "exfoliation [sic]" team. I guess that means they were "rubbing someone off." Or maybe I was taken aback by his description of a restaurant with a "wide, lightly creaking [sic] mahogany entrance." Or perhaps it was Tacoma's home in which the "apartment was vast, the walls a shock [sic] of glass." 

I had to laugh uproariously at the cleanup process – of an entire house – that concluded with "a methodical washing of every surface, followed by a radiological burst, in which every room in the house was exposed for a brief time." Ben, Ben, Ben: you can irradiate something small to kill living tissue on its surface, but you can't irradiate an entire house (room by room)... not without exposing all the neighbors to radiation, too.

Other bizarre constructs include, "a mess of broken white ceramic plastic" (one or the other but not both) and "nothing more than some molecular-level DNA" (DNA is a molecule). I was also a little surprised to find that Tacoma had been an all-American college lacrosse player for UVa who matriculated at, apparently, sixteen; but only managed to garner a 2.77 GPA upon graduating at twenty. 

Combine the tired trope of the well-nigh indestructible alpha male with some decidedly strange writing and sloppy science, and you have an author in serious need of a better editor.

Oh, yeah, and a better plotline: two stars.

copyright © 2022 scmrak