Book Review: 'One Rough Man' by Brad Taylor

By DAVID STOKES
http://blogcritics.org/books/
Saturday, February 19, 2011

On the day that changed everything, Sept. 11, 2001, Brad Taylor’s wife was nine months pregnant. Within days, she gave birth to their daughter. Four days after that, Taylor headed to Afghanistan with the image of his crying wife holding their new baby permanently etched in his mind. During his twenty-one years in the U.S. Army, Taylor’s job assignment was with special operations and ultimately as a commander in the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment — better known as Delta Force.

He’s the real deal.

This is what makes his debut novel, One Rough Man, so fascinating — Brad Taylor has actually navigated the deep currents of the complex and dangerous waters he writes about. He takes the reader beyond Delta Forces and into the realm of the secretive — out of the box and off the grid. His vehicle is called Taskforce and his hero is a guy named Pike Logan. Think Jack Bauer and Mitch Rapp on steroids, or Jason Bourne — only taller, tougher, and totally unlike Matt Damon.

As Americans watch events unfold throughout the Middle East, first in Egypt and now with unrest spreading like a contagion to other states in the region, we have a fresh reminder of just how quickly geo-political reality changes. And always nearby there is the threat of Islamism.

It is an ideology that feeds on instability, whether exploiting the rage and frustration in American prisons, or manipulating the hopes and dreams of naïve protestors in public squares, Islamism is a political poison that deceives and destroys. We’d do well to bear in mind that the various tales spun by novelists — stories of intrigue and suspense — are not really all that far from reality. Not far at all.

The title of Brad Taylor’s new book, One Rough Man, comes from a quote attributed to George Orwell (with a nod to Rudyard Kipling): “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Some who spend too much time missing the point might debate the authenticity of the quote, but its essential truth is beyond dispute. And Pike Logan is the roughest of the rough men.

Is there some Brad Taylor in Pike Logan? He insists that there isn’t, though he acknowledges his great sense of pride in having served with many “Pike Logan’s” over the years. There is no doubt, however, that Taylor’s literary creation is informed by his real-life experiences. Although unlike the author, Logan endures — and not all that gracefully — a severe personal trauma, one that puts his life and career on a downward spiral. It’s a well-worn path of self-destructive behavior born of despair.

But, One Rough Man is every bit as much a story of redemption as it is of retribution. And of course — but far from clichéd — the way back involves a woman in need. Her name is Jennifer Cahill, the niece of a celebrated anthropologist who is murdered after finding what turns out to be an ancient WMD — yep, a good old fashioned weapon of mass destruction — in a remote Mayan jungle. As the story moves forward, Logan and Cahill find themselves racing against the clock to thwart what could potentially be an Islamist terrorist act of historic proportions. And they themselves are being tracked and targeted, as well.

This is a familiar formula for fans of the “thriller” genre, but Taylor’s background and clear flair for research give the book the feel of something different from a predictable first novel. It is also clear at times that the author finds himself unable to let the reader in on details that are very real and very classified.

Taylor is currently finishing work on a second book in an ultimate series involving Pike Logan. It is likely that this new character will take his place among that elite group of near super-heroes who give us a glimpse of hope that there might, in fact, be such people who make the world safer for the rest of us. Sometimes they make us uncomfortable. And certainly we all acknowledge the tension between our love for freedom and the occasional need for things to happen in the name of security that seem to momentarily trump, or at least suspend, a basic value here or there. I suspect, however, that more people than care to admit it secretly hope there are such operatives “ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Brad Taylor has wanted to write a novel for a long time, but it was as he approached retirement from the army, after a final teaching assignment at the Citadel, that he decided to give it a try. One Rough Man is a great first book and leaves the reader with a hunger for more.

We may as well make room in our hearts and on our shelves for some great Pike Logan adventures to come.


Brad Taylor gives us the world’s next action hero

Rough and Tumble

by Erica Jackson Curran
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/
February 16, 2011


After serving 21 years in the Army Infantry and Special Forces, Brad Taylor knows a thing or two about the military. The Charleston resident’s debut novel, One Rough Man, uses his experience to tell the story of Pike Logan, a member of a government anti-terrorism operation called the Taskforce.

Logan is a leader of the super-secret team tasked with eliminating terrorists, but when his wife and daughter are brutally murdered, he’s so consumed with rage that he’s viewed as a danger to the force and discharged. He falls into a life of solitude and alcoholism until he receives a cry for help from a college student named Jennifer Cahill whose anthropologist uncle was murdered after discovering an ancient weapon of mass destruction in the Mayan jungle.

Operating off the grid, Logan resembles a superhero, fighting for vengeance and righteousness in the name of America. Taylor assures us the organization is completely fictional: “The fact that Taskforce is in my book is proof positive that it isn’t real, because I wouldn’t put it in there.” He also admits there were times he wishes such a group could exist, above protocol and above constraints. “It’s kind of this make-believe organization everyone has a fantasy about,” he says.

Though recently retired, Taylor has plenty of personal experiences to pull from, including eight years in the Delta Force, where he commanded multiple troops and a squadron. He served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other classified locales. Events in the book are inspired by his military career, but don’t generally reflect actual events.

“No overarching real-life events are depicted in the book,” he says. “As far as I know, we’ve never killed a drug kingpin in Guatemala, captured a terrorist getting a dirty bomb in Georgia, or killed a terrorist in Sarajevo. Having said that, a host of experiences, which happened to me or to people I know, appear. It’s impossible for them not to.”

With his broad knowledge base, Taylor was extra careful not to reveal sensitive information, calling on friends in the military to proof the book before publication.

“I write fiction, which means I can make up whatever I want,” he says. “If I paint myself into a corner where the only way to keep the plot moving forward is something classified, I simply back up and start again.”

A stickler for detail, Taylor supplements his deep knowledge base with meticulous research. He studied Guatemala, Belize, and Washington, D.C. over the course of writing One Rough Man. For an excerpt in which Pike and Jennifer must break out of an interrogation facility at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Taylor actually visited the airport, tracing his characters’ steps from customs, noting cameras, alarms, and checkpoints.

“In my mind it’s kind of insulting to the reader if you don’t do any research at all,” Taylor says. “In fact, I won’t even finish a book if it’s something I know about and the guy’s just making things up off the top of his head. I’ll just put the book down because it smacks of laziness.”

Taylor had always toyed with the idea of writing a book, but didn’t have time until he retired in 2010. During a stint teaching military science at the Citadel, he suddenly found himself with extra time on his hands.

“When I got there, it was like I was on a 200 mile-per-hour train and now I was on one doing 10 miles-per-hour,” he says. “It was a real rewarding job, but it was nowhere near the pace, so I said I would try to write a book.”

With no official training, One Rough Man was a brand-new learning experience for Taylor.

“I learned to write on the fly, initially through the help of a freelance editor named Caroline Upcher,” he says. “She was brutal on my first manuscript — which will never see the light of day — and it was a steep learning curve, but in the end she taught me the rudimentary skills of the craft.”

With that training behind him, Taylor is prepared to bring Pike Logan back in a series of books. In fact, his second has already been turned in to his editor. While he won’t divulge the details, Taylor says that Pike and Jennifer open a business to be used by the Taskforce as a cover to conduct operations, dealing with a homegrown threat that’s “very, very plausible.”

Realistic threats and current events factor prominently in Taylor’s plot.

“It takes about two years to get a novel out, and in that time any number of things could happen,” he says. “Truthfully, a big fear I had with One Rough Man was that Iran would cause a war, which would have drastically affected the currency of the book. I tend to stick to overarching themes as opposed to concrete current events.

“For instance, the Mexican drug cartels are a bit player in One Rough Man. I wrote that section a long time ago, because I figured it wasn’t going to be solved anytime soon, and now the cartels are big news, so it worked out,” he says. “On the other hand, Egypt is a large part of book two. I’m looking at the current events over there and wondering how much rewriting I’m going to be doing.”

http://bradtaylorbooks.com/