What did you like best about Option to Kill? What did you like least?
After reading the first 2 Nathan McBride books, I thought Nathan and Harvey were a team. Here Nathan goes off half-cocked rather than wait 15 hours for Harv to return from a family vacation in Istanbul. What was worse is that he made his 12 year old rescued kidnap victim his "wing man" in a very dangerous mission in the middle of the desert against a dozen trained mercenaries and the child murderer the little girl just escaped from. Did he consider what would happen to the young girl if he got himself killed? Plus I found her whining annoying. Nathan was nothing less than a child abuser himself to subject the girl to multiple violent murders in an era when kids can't tell the difference - either morally or legally - between a violent video game like "Call To Duty" and real life murders. Maybe it's just me, but I don't like mixing impressionable babies with my special ops killing missions.
What could Andrew Peterson have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
Even if Harv was out of the picture, Peterson should have first secured the safety of the little girl, THEN let Nathan go on the mission. My favorite assassin Court Gentry of Mark Greaney's "The Gray Man" series does all of his assignments alone. To take that child along to meet with a guy who is an admitted child rapist was extremely stupid and implausible. Plus she's one of those kids who grew up with "time out" rather than "knocked out" - she was stubborn, obstinate, and smart-mouthed, rarely doing what Nathan tells her to do in time-sensitive situations. Her repeated "Whyyyyy?" would have driven me crazy and I'm a mother, not an unmarried, childless sniper. If Harvey had been been on the scene, as a father and the duo's voice of reason, he'd never allowed that little girl to accompany them on the various assignments in this story. I found the child to be a distraction rather than an addition to the story.
What about Dick Hill’s performance did you like?
Dick Hill is a favorite of mine. He does better here than in "Forced To Kill" where he got his male character voices mixed up and had the females sounding like they sucked on helium. The "Daffy Duck" voice works better on the 12 year old.
Was Option to Kill worth the listening time?
In a way it was. Overall it is a thrilling ride from start to finish. My only issue is that having that child along almost ensures that Nathan will live - which pretty much gives away the ending. The epilogue is rather sappy considering the main characters' backgrounds and all of the killing.
Any additional comments?
Again, the child makes the story totally unbelievable. In the final mission, she's left on a hill in the Mohave Desert dressed in a camouflage gillie suit, acting as Nathan's spotter. She's given a crash course in covert ops hand signals, location coordinates, the use of a 2-way radio, AND the ELT on his Bell helicopter hidden nearby. She even drives the getaway car in a prior mission and in the final one. Really? Nathan did everything except give her a Glock!! He even admits that a Search and Rescue team was likely not to reach her in time. Plus the mission was to rescue the child's mother from a sadistic serial killer with a thing for adolescent females and whom kidnaps young orphaned Latino girls (for a reason a reason I won't reveal here) and then allows his posse to rape the girls before they are murdered and their bodies dumped. Without Harvey in the picture, Nathan makes a lot of bumbling mistakes which should have gotten him killed. The shoot out in Nordstrom and the mall was just plain dumb because with an Amber Alert in place for the girl he'd just rescued in a nearby street shoot out would have caused mall security to immediately lock all doors preventing his egress from the area. I understand that the lure of this kind of thriller is that they are improbable but not impossible. However this story asks the reader to overlook blaring inconsistencies and implausible actions by a normally organized person. I will read any upcoming books in this series since I feel this was an aberration. I'm just stunned to see the large number of other reviewers who didn't find having that child take part in dangerous operations involving torture, rape, and killing a bit ridiculous and disconcerting. Maybe none of them are mothers........😡