Target Zero

Jack Mars has shifted gears with his new series with Agent Zero. Shifting from the Stone series to Zero series seems to have been the next logical step for Mars . Our hero Agent Zero aka Kent Steele aka professor and family man is an extremely skilled covert ops agent who is attempting to remember his past after a memory suppressor implant has been removed from his skull.
Between getting flashes of his life with his now deceased wife and his domestic occupation as a family man dealing with two teenage girls has briefly disrupts his ability to function as a skilled covert operator for the government. Mars bring his writing skills to bear in this new series, I highly recommend the audio version of the novel to fans of the Luke Stone series. You will not be disappointed. Real life adventure in a troubled world,

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Action packed

I really enjoy the non-stop action. Easy fun read with plenty of twists and turns.

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A shameless cash grab ending.

the book had a good speed and interesting story to carry it through. Someone directed this to be a cliffhanger rather than a self sustaining book. It will take but one more Audible Original to takes my good money worth a whole stor:The End!!!

...and it will be if this kind if cash grab again Audible Originals will meet my End.
This is my warning.

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Be Prepared To Buy Book Three.. Or Not..

Jack Mars quite clearly usurped the idea of a brainwashed Jason Bourne-type character in 'Agent Zero' to create CIA Covert Agent Reid Lawson/Kent Steele. In this second novel in the series, he rehashes the plot of Tom Clancy's 'Executive Orders' - Islamic terrorists adapting a biological agent to unleash death (Smallpox in this one instead of Ebola). Additionally, In the build-up for the mission, Agent Zero also meets Mars's version of 'Q' from the James Bond series.
One gets the impression that Mars is like a Hollywood screenplay-writer - re-presenting someone else's work.. though without the challenge of adapting a story for a different format.
Fortunately, he writes action passably well, has a good grasp of pacing, and largely succeeds at making ludicrous scenarios plausible. At the same time, however, dialogue is often painful, combat is overscripted, and attempts at humanizing characters (e.g. Lawson's daughters) are sometimes laughably ineffective.
The Verdict: the book is inferior to the templates, and the writing is pretty bad - but not *terrible*, I guess.
Notably, this novel compounds the crime of unoriginality by presenting a "Cliffhanger" ending for one of the major plot-threads, however. The novel quite obviously ends with the expectation that readers will purchase the next book in the series.

Eduardo Ballerini turns in an "average" performance in this one. His tone, timbre, and cadence are - typical for him - excellent (and he is clearly interested in the book he's reading), but his pacing is a little off (I suggest playing the recording at 1.15X) and his deficiencies in voice-acting are glaring (Mars writes characters from all over the planet and Ballerini admirably attempts ballpark-accurate accents for all of them - but they're subpar). Altogether, while his talents are better-suited to a less "international" dramatis personae, Ballerini's narration is creditable.

In toto, this is a poor-to-fair Action-Thriller.. and a melange of Ludlum, Clancy, and Fleming. It's not crazy to spend a Credit on this 3.5/10 book if it fits in your wheelhouse, but be ready to go on in the 'Kent Steele' series if you become enamored with the action and the admittedly interesting combination of History Professor & SuperSpy. I felt manipulated.. and the deficiencies are severe enough that I personally will not be doing so.

[Incidentally: One would think that a Georgetown University Professor of History would have heard of the Spanish Inquisition and Witch Trials.. A PhD historian acting on information he gets from burning a captive alive seems inconsistent - and it's pretty nauseating violence-porn besides.👎]

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