Hunt the Wolf

April 23, 2012
SEAL veteran Mann and bestseller Pezzullo (Inside SEAL Team Six) make their fiction debut with this solid military adventure thriller. U.S. Navy Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker leads the members of SEAL Team Six in the hunt for terrorist Abu Rasul Zaman (aka AZ), al-Qaeda’s number three man, who manages to slip through the team’s attack on a warehouse hideout in Karachi. Evidence seized during the raid points to a sex kidnapping scheme in France and to a mystery ship, the Syrena. Crocker and his men have to deal with the usual Washington weenies and a troublesome CIA contact in Pakistan, Lou Donaldson, among other minor impediments. The characters spend a little too much time reminiscing about their home lives and bemoaning the state of the world, but a steady stream of action makes this a worthy entry into the burgeoning SEAL thriller genre. Agent: Heather Mitchell, Gelfman Schneider Literary Agency.

June 15, 2012
A year ago, a team of Navy SEALs impressed the world by killing Osama bin Laden. In this book, the SEALs go a few steps further by capturing a leading terrorist, breaking up a sex-trafficking ring and scaling K2 for good measure; all in a few days with little apparent food or sleep. Far-fetched but fast-moving, former SEAL commando Mann's debut novel is essentially a series of action scenes strung together. A car bomb devastates a U.S. embassy in Morocco during the prologue, a young woman is abducted two chapters later, and it doesn't take long for the plot to tie those two events together (though we barely hear from the woman again, after one chapter from her perspective). Because the book quickly establishes that the SEALs are pretty much invincible and that freedom and justice sure beat the alternative, there's never much suspense about how things will turn out. Co-writer Pezzullo (Jawbreaker, 2005, etc.) is probably responsible for fleshing out the character details--Chief Warrant Officer Tom Crocker is a music fan who hums Sonny Rollins and Bill Withers songs to himself, a nice touch--but even he can't keep the terrorists from uttering stock terrorist lines ("You're an infidel! What do you know of Allah?") at crucial moments. The K2 side trip, which introduces a strong if short-lived female character and is full of gritty details about mountain terrain and hypothermia, is by far the most exciting section, though it has little bearing on the main plot. There's also a bureaucratic supervisor who frustrates Crocker's efforts at every turn, an action plot device that's been familiar since James Bond was in diapers. The finale is a seaboard showdown complete with explosions and knife fights. SEAL aficionados and action addicts will find a couple engaging hours of reading here; everyone else can wait for the inevitable movie.

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May 15, 2012

A ruthless sheik is running an international kidnapping ring that specializes in abducting women to be sold for sex, with the proceeds funding terrorism. Thomas Crocker and his team of SEALs are called on to stop him and to rescue the latest victim. There are, of course, chases and fights galore. Prior to this debut novel, Mann, with Pezzullo, wrote a memoir of his 30 years with the Navy SEALs (Inside SEAL Team Six). There has been interest in the shadowy and incredibly heroic works of the U.S. Navy SEALs, in particular the almost legendary SEAL Team Six, since even before they took down Osama bin Laden in 2011. While the premise of this novel is potentially exciting, it fails in execution. VERDICT This short novel has been absurdly punctuated and stretched in an irritating attempt to fill 300-plus pages. As a result, it lacks depth, and, while there is a lot of slam-bang action, there is little to recommend the tale. Purchase for demand.--Robert Conroy, Warren, MI

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 17, 2015
Mann and Pezzullo's fraught fifth SEAL Team Six thriller (after 2014's Hunt the Jackal) finds Thomas Crocker, the leader of Black Cell, a special unit attached to the CIA, shaken by an unusually high number of deaths. Crocker's recent work has cost the lives of several colleagues, as well as those of civilians who became collateral damage. That bad luck continues when a young CIA operative working with him in Istanbul is pushed under a bus. The agent's death is somehow connected with a new assignment for Crocker's team, whose members fortunately have an abnormal amount of neuropeptide Y, an amino acid that serves as a natural tranquilizer, giving them a "major physical advantage in pressure situations." That mission starts in Syria, where they must prevent the terrorist known as the Fox from launching a sarin attack. Readers can expect plenty of action from this installment, but little sophistication or depth. Agent: Heather Mitchell, Gelfman Schneider Literary.

June 10, 2019
Mann and Pezzullo’s solid eighth military thriller featuring SEAL Team Six leader Tom Crocker (after 2018’s Hunt the Viper) takes Chief Warrant Officer Crocker and his team to subtropical eastern Nigeria to train members of the Nigerian Armed Forces Special Forces. When reports of a Boko Haram unit in the area reach Crocker, he decides to check them out as part of the Nigerians’ training. The terrorists are led by Festus Ratty Kumar, known as the Leopard, who believes that attacking civilians, killing unbelievers, and kidnapping schoolgirls are all legitimate methods of waging jihad. Crocker’s mission goes awry, and the Leopard escapes and soon rallies to attack the SEALs at a natural gas processing plant. There, Crocker and his scattered team fight against great odds to extricate themselves and save the plant’s employees. The authors still have a habit of halting the action to allow characters to ponder their home lives and origins, though they have cut most of the lectures and history lessons that marred earlier entries. Hopefully, the series will continue to improve. Agent: Eric Lupfer, Fletcher & Co.