SEAL Team Six: Hunt the Dragon

In Mann and Pezzullo’s intermittently exciting sixth SEAL Team Six thriller (after 2015’s Hunt the Fox), Chief Warrant Officer Thomas Michael Crocker sets out to rescue James Ryan Dawkins, an aerospace engineer kidnapped and forced to develop a North Korean long-range ICBM capable of striking the United States. Crocker must also track a source of near-perfect counterfeit U.S. currency. Insider jargon and an alphabet soup of SIGs, AKs, NVGs, and SDVs bring the military aspects ably to life, but off-mission scenes ring flat. The authors highlight the brutality of the North Korean government, though the titular villain, “Honored General” Chou Jang Hee, is barely a presence. Crocker’s globe-trotting investigation of state-sponsored counterfeiting feels like make-work before the final mission unfolds. It’s only when the rescue goes wrong, as rescues will, and Crocker and his surviving team must avoid dangerous North Korean forces as they make their way toward the border that the novel becomes consistently gripping. Agent: Heather Mitchell, Gelfman Schneider Literary. (May)