Three books by Brad Thor

Brad Thor. Blowback. New York: Atria Books, 2005. 440 pages. ISBN 0743271157.
Brad Thor. Foreign Intelligence. New York: Atria Books, 2010. 376 pages. ISBN 9781416586593.
Brad Thor. The Athena Project. New York: Atria Books, 2010. 324 pages. ISBN 978143919255.

For a week or so during the past month I was in the mood to read thrillers, so I decided to polish off my small collection of three as-yet unread Brad Thor novels. I picked up all three books at either BEA conventions or through book review list that I belong to. Blowback is signed "To Rebecca -- Best Wishes, Brad Thor" so I definitely got that one at BEA.

Two of the books focus primarily on one of Thor's recurring characters, Scott McGrath. He's a former ATF agent who was hired to work for the U.S. President in various capacities. In Blowback, he's caught on tape pummeling a man whom he thinks is a terrorist but who turns out to be a fruit vendor. Persona non grata, he has to investigate the real terrorist to clear his own name. Foreign Influence has McGrath trying to catch a group of terrorists who bombed a bus full of young American tourists. He's assisted by a team of female operatives called the Athena Project. The team is composed of former college athletes, all very intelligent and beautiful (of course).

Both Blowback and Foreign Influence were well-written examples of their particular genre of political thriller. The third book that I read was The Athena Project, published the same year as Foreign Influence. The all-women team has been assigned to track down the arms dealer who provided the bombs that killed the American tourists in the Foreign Influence. This book felt shallower to me than the other two; perhaps Mr. Thor rushed a little too much to get both books out around the same time. Overall, though, I enjoyed all of the books and would recommend them to anyone who likes this genre.

In other news:

I watched my first TED Talk today: Jeff Iliff's One More Reason to Get a Good Night's Sleep. Those who know me probably know that I'm an early to bed, early to rise kind of person, so they won't be surprised that I found Mr. Iliff's talk completely convincing. He reported on brain research that shows that the brain uses the time when you're sleeping to clean the brain's waste products out. The rest of the body uses the lymphatic system to do this, but the brain doesn't have enough room. Instead, it uses the cerebrospinal fluid to clean out waste products, but again, this only happens when you're sleeping. He posits that there might be a connection between Alzheimer's disease and the inability to sleep well, since Alzheimer's is characterized by a buildup of such waste products. Again, it convinced me!