HUNT THE WOLF

Hunt The Wolf is based around Navy SEAL commander Thomas Crocker and his team, who are not only chasing known terrorists, getting involved in slavery rings, but climbing K2.

The novel starts with a mission, that although doesn’t go completely to plan, manages to kill the majority of the bad guys without any damage to the SEAL Team. They then fly out, but decide not to go home to the family that is mentioned, but climb a mountain in perilous conditions. This leads to meeting a Norwegian man who asks for help in finding a kidnapped girl and the rest of the plot spirals through that and the terrorism, culminating in an action scene.

I like action thrillers and usually have a lot of tolerance for the fantasy meets reality adventures because you get so caught up in the story, most things are forgivable, plus there’s always an element of truth. But – this time I did not and found several of the sequences where Crocker gets hit, shot, knifed or falls down a snowy crevasse but still manages to pull himself out and save the day rather incredulous. Especially as the wounds that befell his Team were dealt with more realism and you could see how they were affected. Saying that it was made clear that Crocker is an action and fitness junkie, and being fair I have no idea what its like to be shot but have that adrenalin buzz needed to save my own life or complete the mission, as an active SEAL (at one point) Mann does and may have been pulling from personal experience.

The plot was not overly original, but tied together well and in parts was fast paced enough to give a good feel of what being in action must be like. Other parts were very slow and I failed to see the reasoning for spending a lot of time on the mountain climbing, when it was not relevant to the book really and the time could have been spent tightening and expanding what it was really all about. It did not help that a lot of this was spent in Crocker’s’ introspective thinking about his family and missing them, when he could have gone home rather than making the trip. Rather than being a roller coaster ride speeding round bends and throwing you down hills, Hunt the Wolf trundles round a few bends, staggers up the peak and then throws you down the descent at a rapid pace.