Since the days of Stalin, politically based murder has been the Cold War’s dirty little secret. Neither side wants to investigate. Let the Russians kill their defectors, even if it occurs on US soil. Who cares.

A democratic staffer who assembles negative information on Republican opponents develops a conscious, steals information that is both vital and detrimental to Dem election tactics and decides to go public . . . then he gets murdered. DC police could care less.

Duncan Hunter is ex-CIA now DEA. His weapon of choice is a slow low flying nearly silent airplane. Been around since Vietnam, but Hunter has perfected its abilities that he has made into a stealth aircraft. And added some weapons that make him and his plane a serious threat to people who’d do harm to the US. Threats that come from religious fanatics and cartel heads alike. The plane can fire an air-based sniper rifle accurate out to more than a few miles. And a laser than can blind enemies by frying their eyeballs. He has three of these planes (where'd he get all his money?), the necessary ground crew (Bill Jones and Bill Smith), and (from an earlier book) has a daughter who graduated from the Air Force Academy who now uses that stealth plane to fry Mexican poppy fields. Yeah, an alpha family by DNA.

Hunter’s former boss at the CIA is on the way out. Election is coming up and the opposition candidate has a huge lead. He’s thinking somethings afoot somewhere in the Agency. Politics are getting in the way of protecting the country. He asks Hunter to find out what’s going on and who needs to be held accountable (and with a title like Wet Work, you know what ‘accountable’ means). The sitting President is at risk, too. But politics are at play even in the Secret Service.

This book's jacket blurb is interesting. It’ll draw in readers of political thrillers. Like me. The depth of detail around the book’s election season rivals what we are experiencing right now. Book characters are thinly veiled versions of current politicians. That may be a little too close for some. As such, it’ll have a political slant and this one slants to the right. Way to the right.

Politics aside, when you pick up a book at Barnes and Noble, the heft tells you something. Not so with a Kindle. You read and read and read and read and read and the counter at the bottom right corner of the screen barely moves. Unless you know how to convert Kindle location to pages, you don’t know. And this is a beast. Over 600 print pages. Long long long conversations over coffee and fajitas in an out of the way Mexican joint in Texas. Or again in DC. And again, in NYC. Incredibly detailed after action debriefs, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Now I’m of the opinion that if I pick up a book, I owe it to the author to finish it out of respect for the work required. And I did. But, man, this was a chore. Not because it was poorly written or researched. All that is first rate. Without question. First rate. It’s just so dang loooooooooong. I’m betting that at least 20-25% could’ve been cut without any loss to the storyline. This is Hewitt's fifth Duncan Hunter book. Wonder it they are all this big.

Be forewarned. This is good, but it is a commitment.

I’m afraid I found this clunky and derivative - often the narrative is stopped while we hear commentary about the Nazi generals, and sometimes most idiosyncratic. The worst part of it all - and I understand this is a series - is that the main protagonist appears in other volumes (maybe I have this wrong) - in any case, this is not for me. The writing is rather wooden as well

It is very unusual for me not finish a novel that I have started. This is one of those rare instances.
When I read the blurb telling me what the novel is about it seems to be the Type of novel that greatly interests me. Unfortunately that did not prove true.

I got bogged down in the first 100 pages which jumped from an early section set in the days of Stalinist Russia and involving Soviet spies in Washington D.C to the present. As I tried to figure out what was going on in US politics as described in this novel (not to be confused with the bizarre reality we currently face), I got lost. I looked ahead at another 600 pages and decided Life's Too Short (LTS).

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC for review.

Mark Hewitt presents the 5th book in his series headlining Duncan Hunter: a pilot for the CIA. The book opens at a point where Hunter destroys a field of marijuana via the use of computer aided weapons. And as in previous books he jumps right into more action. A plot discovered by the CIA director is discovered in which it appears likely that a rogue group of high level government officials have stolen and fled with a secret weapon. The weapon is unknown to most people and involves a gun that can be aimed, fired, and effective up to 10 miles from the target. The fleeing rogue officials are feared to want to assassinate the new, recently elected president of the United States and claim a reward for doing so from the Soviet Union.
Hunter goes right into pursuit of the officials aided by his wife, and also his daughter from a previous marriage who is coincidentally working for the CIA. Their hunt for the rogue group is hampered by the inability of the CIA to understand that a weapon unknown to them would have a feasible killing range of up to 10 miles and not be more than a weapon carried by one person.
The action takes place over a complicated mix of politics, trade craft, political realities and normal government functions giving the reader a very solid conspiracy theory novel and a couple of all night reads. The ending finds Hunter and his family on vacation but called upon by his supervisor to drop everything and get back to headquarters to move into another sequence of battle against America's enemies. No rest for the weary, but good reading material.

See my private notes to the publisher. I didn't like this book and won't be reviewing it. I thought the writing substandard and the plot predictable.

Mark Hewitt has obviously done his homework–his research is exhaustive in the detail, operations, alliances, betrayals, tradecraft, and history. Laying a modern-day thriller over the top of this is not an easy task, but the author has done an exemplary job. The life of the president, the partisan work of the DNC, secrets in the CIA, and the machinations of other government and para-government organizations clash in an exciting thriller.