During the Second World War, the Nazis fielded a unit composed of psychos, murderers, and sexual predators — the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger. Its leader, Oskar Dirlewanger, emptied out the deepest, dankest recesses of the Nazi penal system and assembled a diabolical brigade of the deranged, freshly unbound from their sweat-stained straight jackets and rusting manacles.
Uniformed with double lightning bolts emblazoned on their collars, they reeved through Poland, Belarus, Slovakia, and Hungary. Misfits and blood-lusting murderers, a hell-spawn nightmare destroyed by the righteous might of the allied powers, only to be resurrected by modern-day sadists who now preside over Russia’s army in Ukraine.
Brad Thor’s latest thriller Dead Fall doesn’t just pick up where the headlines leave off. It presages the headlines in the 3-D theater of the mind, where you’re held transfixed by the deep sorcery of Brad Thor’s long-honed craft.
Thor immediately binds the reader to his narrative by plunging you into the mortal terrors endured by Anna, a young American aid worker. Terrors and thrills of courage roil and envelop your own mind as Thor draws you scrabbling onward through wreckage and havoc, following behind Anna as she slips like a fox just through the maniacal grasp of battle-hard and criminally insane Russians. Despite her pluck and guile, Anna comes face to face with members of the Wagner Group’s version of the Dirlewanger Brigade.
Insane, perverted, and utterly depraved, the Ravens — a rogue element of the Russian paramilitary Wagner Group, smeared with white face paint to mimic fleshless skulls — plunder the Ukrainian countryside in search of priceless treasures. Led by the “Captain,” the most formidable and sadistic of the band of damned souls, the rogue mercenaries wage a personal war wherein loot, drugs, and rape are the only objectives.
Anna has come to ease the people’s suffering but finds herself the object of brutalization and the victim of abject despair. Only a god of war could hope to deliver someone shackled so profoundly in the infernal pit of deviant abuse.
Fortunately for Anna and the villages plundered by the Ravens, Scot Harvath still hunts the killing fields for monsters and giants. But, he’s forced to enter the theater of war without his teammates, relevant intelligence, or support from Ukrainian forces. Harvath is challenged with ending the Raven rampage, at the front lines, with only a handful of International Legion compatriots.
Stitched between the red-hot scenes of combat, Thor surprises with a complex plot of international espionage and murder usually reserved for the most gripping mystery novels. Dead Fall also features the investigative exploits of a true-to-life FBI agent, Supervisory Special Agent Joseph Carolan. Exemplifying the best traditions of the G-man, Carolan doggedly pursues every possible investigative lead in an effort to disentangle the complexities woven into the fabric of a national security investigation.
Thor told Townhall, “When I write these FBI characters, they’re always based on these older men who I knew in the FBI who were either close to retirement or retiring…Harvath…is named after a friend of mine at the DOJ who processes FISA warrants. So, there’s a real Harvath in the government.”
Thor’s SSA Carolan represents many of the rank and file who make up the FBI’s special agent cadre today. These men and women value their oaths to the Constitution and seek to defend our civil liberties while tenaciously investigating those who threaten our cherished way of life.
Dead Fall is designed to be a work of entertainment, but it’s no mere escapist tripe. Though Thor recognizes his job is to provide the reader with a story that transports the imagination into the realm of the believably fantastic, he delivers chapters chock full of prime rib, dripping with rich au jus.
Eschewing partisanship and avoiding the tribalisms that threaten to dismantle the bonds of comity and unity that have been the hallmark of American society for generations, Thor delivers powerful ground truths that pierce the subterfuge surrounding the Ukrainian conflict.
Dead Fall is crafted with exquisite purpose, delivering complex geopolitical principles via easy-to-understand maxims. For instance, Thor distills political scientist and former counselor of the U.S. Department of State Elliot A. Cohen’s perspective on Ukraine, “what was happening in Ukraine was a war between a calcified society lost in its brutal past and a free society looking toward a decent future.”
And Thor’s purpose and craft extend even to the cover. Dead Fall is graced with one of the most attractive dust jackets to hit the market in my memory. From the tactile responsiveness of the cover material to the rich, dusky sunset pallet, the cover itself hints at the high art contained within. An iconographic black raven perches on the wing of St. Michael — ominous clues to the high drama Thor has constructed for his fortunate readers.
Dead Fall is the creation of talent and discipline forged over decades, spanning 21 previous Harvath thrillers. Beware — when you pick up Dead Fall, you’ll be compelled to read it through, and then you'll be driven by an addiction to go back and read all the rest. Get your copy this Tuesday, July 25th!
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