Rules of Engagement

Military thriller fans will find little new in Bruns and Olson’s capable first novel. A Russian criminal enterprise known as the Bratva is losing money on its arms dealing business, so its leadership hires a terrorist, Rafiq Roshed, who’s presently living and working in North Korea, to stir up trouble in the Far East to boost sales. Roshed, a psychopath with a grudge against the world because of the death of his beloved wife, is an expert in cyber warfare. He hacks into the computers of the Chinese, Japanese, and the American militaries, and begins pitting their respective forces against each other until WWIII looms. A team of cyber-genius midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., is assigned the job of finding the elusive Roshed and stopping the upcoming war. Bruns and Olson handle the action scenes well, but the surfeit of overly familiar characters and the shopworn plot will leave readers hoping that the authors will come up with something more original next time. [em]Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune. (June) [/em]