Black (Whitcomb)

Chris Whitcomb’s first book, Cold Zero, was a memoir of (part of) his time on the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. I found it fascinating, and part of that was because of Whitcomb’s clear, direct prose style. Now his first novel, Black, is out. Frankly, the nonfiction book was better. In Black, Whitcomb’s protagonist is Jeremy Waller, a young FBI agent who joins HRT and ends up involved in a bizarre antiterrorist mission that is much different than it seems. Along with Waller, we have a risk-loving corporate executive who may or may not be a CIA operative, a megalomaniac multibillionaire who may or may not be a traitor, and a wealth of technical detail that may or may not be accurate (in fairness, Whitcomb does a pretty good job with the technology). There are a couple of last-minute plot twists that are regrettably predictable, and the ending is anticlimactic. I think Whitcomb can do better.