# 'Line of Succession' by William Tyree.



## Sam (Sep 21, 2011)

I've been waiting a while to get stuck in to a new thriller novelist. For the past few years I've been reading the latest instalments of Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, and wondering if Eric van Lustbader could ever do justice to the Bourne series. Some of his work has been good, but the opposite is true of a lot of it. One day I was perusing the thriller section of Amazon, searching for any upcoming titles by those aforementioned authors, when I was recommended a novel called _Line of Succession _by a first-time author William Tyree. I grow bored of the same characters over and over, and I enjoyed the blurb enough to have a sample sent wirelessly to my Kindle, figuring this was something fresh and new. I was not disappointed. 

The novel starts as all thrillers should: with a bang. Private James Doheny is awoke at 2.25 a.m. by his commanding officer, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. He orders him to drive a Humvee to a specified locale and await additional orders there. When Doheny arrives at the location, he's killed by a bullet from a sniper rifle. Thus begins the break-neck narrative which follows in the subsequent 400-odd pages. We soon learn that the private's assassination is part of an elaborate plot to target the most powerful men and women in the U.S. government: The presidential line of succession. 

Sometimes, I come on thrillers in which the first chapter is breath-taking, but it all goes downhill from there. Not so with this one. Before we've even drawn breath to consider the reasoning behind Doheny's murder, chapter two introduces us to the President. He's flying in HMX-1, en route to Camp David, when several Stinger missiles destroy both the shell choppers and Marine One. As the aircraft plummet to the ground, a group of highly trained mercenaries move in to secure the area. All communication with the President is lost within minutes. 

Enjoying some time off with his family, the President's Secretary of Defence is the next target. His boat is surrounded by a group of rifle-toting mercenaries. In the commotion, his wife falls from the cutter into the ocean. SecDef makes a hard, but critical, decision to leave her behind and flee the men. 

The pace and action from thereon is relentless. Tyree is a promising debutant in the thriller genre; one to look out for in the future. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone, not just thriller lovers.


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