Detachment Delta-Don Bendell

Detachment Delta
Don Bendell
Berkley, Mar 2009, $6.99
ISBN: 9780425224489

Lakota warrior Master Sergeant Charlie Strongheart is a member of the elite Delta Force Combat Applications Group (CAG). His current assignment is to assassinate a New York City cop on the streets of Manhattan. He succeeds in taking out James Rashad, but NYPD had a sting operation so the local police angrily capture Charlie as a cop killer. The cops are taken aback as they thought they were conducting surveillance of a drug deal, but are shocked to find a stinger missile inside Rashad’s vehicle. The next day Charlie is freed by the court.

The brass assigns Poke as Charlie is called by his unit with a dangerous mission. He and CAG “Funny Platoon” Sergeant First Class Fila Jannart, an Iranian-American, are to infiltrate Iran and terminate jihadist Davood Faraz Dabdeh, whose growing popularity alarms the Western intelligence agency as he claims Bin Laden is a coward and has no compunctions raping and killing female Muslims as well as any American. The difficulty of the mission is killing him without martyring him.

Don Bendell moves from his enjoyable Criminal Investigations Detachment series to the Delta Force CAG thriller, but retains the action-packed excitement while providing the audience intriguing background into his lead couple especially Charlie and what is even more fascinating is what occurs before a deployment. The story line is fast-paced from the New York scenario to the Fort Bragg gangbanging to Iran and never slows down while insuring Charlie and Fila are fully developed. Although a strong bias with an obvious good and bad characterization mindset leading to opposition characters like General Rozanski and the villains seem to be somewhat like caricatures with perversions, fans will relish DETACHMENT DELTA starring two real American heroes with intriguing deep rooted backgrounds especially the heroine.

Harriet Klausner