Jim Geraghty | FracTad's Bookshelf

2024 Books

Twelve months ago, when I made a resolution to write a brief review of every book I read in 2024, I didn’t think I would keep it. However, I managed to write something about each book, and it has been really rewarding. Reviewing a book made me organize my thoughts about it and helped me realize themes and other aspects of it that I wouldn’t have otherwise bothered to consider. I managed to read 61 books this year, including some pretty hefty tomes – War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Churchill’s Marlborough I and Neal Stephenson’s Fall.

What are some highlights? Discovering the weird Christian fantasy of Charles Williams was definitely one. Rediscovering the majesty and beauty Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina was another. For sheer reading pleasure, Simon Fairfax’s A Knight and a Spy series was hard to beat. I also learned a lot of English history reading them!

Jim Geraghty’s Dueling Six Demons took one of my favorite action series and really upped the game. I can’t wait for the next installment. Likewise, Andrew Klavan’s A Woman Underground was a terrific and pivotal entry in his Cameron Winter series. Finally, I enjoyed discovering the classic British mystery writer Ngaio Marsh and her Inspector Alleyn character. Since there are over 30 titles featuring the witty and urbane inspector, I have many hours of reading pleasure to look forward to.

Some duds include early John Wyndham (it took a few titles for him to hit his stride), a couple of Edgar Wallace thrillers (very dated with unsympathetic characters), and Neal Stephenson’s Fall was the first book of his that I felt was far too long and dragged in places.

As a teacher of high school students, I found Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy very insightful and eye-opening.

In order to have a handy guide to what I read, here’s a list with links to all of my reviews of 2024:

Thanks for reading, and I hope you’ve found my reviews worthwhile. Happy New Year – may 2025 be a good one for you!

Six Demons

Book #30 of 2024

Jim Geraghty has just released book number four in his Dangerous Clique series, and it continues his winning streak. The series began with Between Two Scorpions, continued with Hunting Four Horsemen and Gathering Five Storms, and now we have Dueling Six Demons (don’t ask me why there is no “Three” title; I have no idea!).

The Dangerous Clique is led by CIA agent Katrina Leonidivna, a deadly assassin, and it includes her husband, FBI agent Alec Flanagan, ex-Army Ranger Ward Rutledge, computer hacker Dee, and fellow FBI agent Elaine.Kopek. What sets Geraghty’s books apart from the typical action/thriller yarn is his humor. Alec is always making wisecracks, usually based on his vast knowledge of pop culture. There are plenty of edge-of-your-seat covert operations in the books, but they are leavened by the humor and humanity of the clique members.

If you haven’t read any of this series, I highly recommend you start at the beginning with Between Two Scorpions. There are lots of references to earlier events and characters that, while it’s not absolutely necessary you’re familiar with, really help make sense of what the Clique is battling. And that brings us to another unique quality of Geraghty’s series – his incorporation of supernatural elements. What was merely hinted at in the earlier books is now out in the open: there is a tangible evil force opposing the Clique, and it seems to have roots in some sort of pagan religion.

This force, when it manifests itself, takes the form of a giant humanoid/insectoid – a cockroach, centipede, termite, etc. – and it desires nothing except human pain, suffering, and chaos. Early on in Dueling Six Demons, the Clique begin to see parallels between all of the terrorists they have fought, primarily references to “The Voices”. Suffice it to say, things are getting very creepy in the world of antiterrorism!

The threat in Dueling Six Demons is the sudden hacking and leaking of every superpower’s most sensitive information. It turns out, a quantum computer has been successfully built, and it can overcome any cybersecurity measures with ease. The entire economy of the West, not to mention all utilities, GPS, etc. is on the line. Banking will collapse if transactions aren’t secure. The Clique’s efforts to stop the further development of quantum computing takes them to Ukraine, the Maldives, Libya, Argentina, and Taiwan. There is lots of fun action, and the bad guys definitely get stomped.

I only have one quibble – in my Kindle edition, Geraghty writes, “…most Westerners knew the ‘Malvinas Argentinas’ by another name, the Falkland Islands, the contested territory that was the focus of a ten-week undeclared war between the United Kingdom and Great Britain in 1982.” (p. 143-144). I don’t think there was a civil war in the British Isles in the early 80s!

Finally, a long-running thread concerning a possible CIA mole is exposed, but not resolved. That’s a good thing, since it means we’re guaranteed at least one more book in the series! Kudos to Mr. Geraghty for creating such a likable group of protagonists, and I can’t wait to read the next installment.

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2024: A Year of Reading In Review

JIm Geraghty’s Dueling Six Demons – Terrific Action With Some Creepiness