Author Bio:
TONY ROTH has been a farmer, Eagle Scout, college athlete, musician, and serial entrepreneur. He has flown more than 11,000,000 miles, holds six patents and is the youngest of five competitive brothers. He almost joined the seminary but thought better of it. Roth founded a national care management company in 2014 in honor of his late father. Nicholas Ford was created over many glasses of scotch, blending years of bar stories, long-standing friendships in the intelligence community, and new research. TRIGGER POINT is his first novel in the Nicholas Ford Series.For more information, visit https://www.nicholasfordbooks.com
Book Buy Link:
Editorial Review:
'Trigger Point' by Tony Roth is a high Octane and action packed thriller. It is a story of secret and covert operations in the very murky waters of central American power politics in the mid 1980's at the height of the Reagan administration; of a time when the C.I.A., under a multiplicity of fronts and guises, routinely fished in those choppy waters and here all of the necessary ingredients for a heady brew of violence and intrigue based in Colombia and other states. are present and correct. We are provided in the book with the occasional [and very welcome] geo-political explanation of what - to the uninitiated - appears total chaos. Thus we are informed [or reminded in the case of older readers] of the immense fear that the then Reagan administration had concerning the political situation brewing in Nicaragua and that if the Sandanista regime were to be allowed to be all powerful then this would constitute a direct threat to the United States. The American dislike and fear of the situation in Nicaragua ''had a great deal to do with the administration's consistent favouring of the rule of force over the rule of Law.''
''In apocalyptic terms, President Reagan warned Congress that a 'strategic disaster' was at hand if Nicaragua was left to the Sandanistas...........no one approved of Mr Reagan's refusal to negotiate an agreement with the Sandanistas that would protect both North American defensive interests and Central American Independence..........The message was simple: If the Sandanistas would not negotiate with the already defeated Contras,[the various right- wing groups violently opposed to the Sandinistas]we [the Americans] should overthrow the Sandanistas.......... A United States Invasion of Nicaragua might be required.''
The protagonist hero of 'Trigger Point' is a man troubled by two wholly different and conflicting identities. Nicholas Ford is a twenty one year old farm boy from Illinois with a traditional, conventional family background. In his Junior year at Agricultural College where he specialises in agricultural economics the ultra conventional and patriotic boy is recruited into the C.I.A. by his 'handler', Vincent. We are provided with a perfect profile textbook description of the embryonic C.I.A. operative:
''Nick was exactly the kind of recruit Vincent was looking for. A talented athlete, Nick's long, lean muscles belied his power and agility and afforded him the element of surprise in a fight. At 192 lbs. and a 6'2' frame, his cool blue eyes and light brown hair added to the charm of his midwestern farm boy appearance. But it was his quick strategic mind that clinched him as Vincent's prized recruit.''
Upon graduation, he is supplied with a full cover story that more than satisfies his folks and his fiancee and soon to be wife back home on the farm. The cover story is that he is a fully paid Intern with an agricultural specialist organisation, affording him the opportunity of frequent and extensive travel throughout Central and Latin America whilst remotely studying at the 'Thunderbird School of Global Management'. Both stories are, of course, entirely bogus. His family are only too delighted with the career progress he appears to be making in his new career. In actual fact he is heavily and dangerously involved in covert activities. Based principally in Bogota, Colombia and in a community teeming with Contra rebels and activists, Dictators of varying types, terminally corrupt government officials, undercover agents and ruthless assassins and with the alias cover identity of 'Sean Smith', Nick is swimming in this noxious soup, aided and abetted by Vincent and a stunningly beautiful and entrancingly seductive fellow operator called Gabriella, acting as his official interpreter. Both these figures have their own, further, hidden agendas. Nick, or 'Sean' is actively involved with the United States Agency for International Development [USAID} and is covertly laundering and channeling astronomical sums of money to the various 'Contra' Freedom fighter groups resisting the Nicaraguan Dictator, Daniel Ortega. As far as his family and friends and fiancee soon to be wife Anna Mayer is concerned, young Nick is destined to go far. Nick, unfortunately, has already contravened one of the principal rules of C.I.A. procedure in that he has not revealed his secret role as a C.I.A. operative and any details of his highly dangerous life to his young wife for whom the C.I.A. has, completely unbeknownst to her, engineered a plumb job in computer programming in California. The young married couple have moved there and Nick is increasingly uneasy of his double life, his betrayal of his trusting young wife and his torrid and sexually charged love affair with Gabriella, the glorious temptress. Early on in the story, Sean carries out his first murder and he is plunged deep into the conspiracy of 'The Mission' under the Svengali like influence of Vincent, his gay handler, descending into a quagmire, a lethal spiral of plot, counter plot, murder. and toxic factional politics.
Into 1987 and the muddle, confusion and intrigue becomes yet more complicated, and with Nick, fresh from masterminding and personally carrying out the murder of a key Colombian figure, becoming ever more involved and with yet more central American states becoming caught up in the Reaganite policies of involvement in the politics of the area. It is certainly not the purpose of this review to reveal any plot spoiling details beyond those which are absolutely necessary; [ though, as a recommendation, strict attention at all times is strongly recommended! ] leading the breathless reader to follow the many twists and turns of the plot for himself or herself. In this respect, 'Trigger Point'will always deliver and the plot twist and turns into ever more twisted and Machiavellian waters. By now. Nick's marriage with Anna is well and truly heading for the rocks. She suspects him of having an affair and his own father is seriously worried and increasingly suspicious of his activities as an agricultural student and advisor. His own cover seems well and truly blown to the Nicaraguan authorities against whom he is increasingly conspiring. The following months of Nick's life are best described as frenetic. Occasional visits home to visit his parents and his increasingly estranged wife are interspersed with an ever greater pressure and a traumatic series of episodes with Priscilla, Vincent and the team in their seemingly never ending campaign to fulfil their mandates against both Ortega in Nicaragua and Noriega in Panama before all matters finally come to a violent head.
Increasingly, Nick is plagued and tormented by guilt and self doubt; hating the difficulties of this double life he is leading. It must be remembered that he is only twenty two. As he confides to Vincent, and Vincent's gay lover, Richard:
''What will I become in life? How do I compartmentalise the killings? I see their faces, all of them; I don't even know their names. I never really sleep anymore, and when I do - they all come back to haunt me.... I can't eat - so I drink all the time to dull my feelings....I constantly worry about losing myself. I don't want to be Sean; he's not me.''Placatingly, soothingly, Vincent replies: ''You are not Sean inside. Sean is your soldier and killing is something that happens in war because of the mission. You are not a cold-blooded killer, you a spy.'' As an explanation and a justification this can only be partially successful.
Nick becomes a seasoned killer and executioner and himself suffers extreme privation in his service with the C.I.A. and in fulfilment of his mission. Although, at the end, he is 'stood down', both he and we, the readers, know that this will be only a pause in his clandestine career and far from the end of his adventures. Throughout, Roth displays an erudite knowledge of the historical facts and a skill in bringing this tangled and complex knowledge all together in an exciting and breathtaking narrative of skulduggery and double dealing at the highest level. He has added greatly to the whole genre and his readers will doubtless keenly await a sequel of the life and times of 'Nick Ford'.
*****
“Trigger Point” by Tony Roth receives four stars from The Historical Fiction Company
Comments