This is the third in Suzanne Brockmann’s now 15 volume Troubleshooters series, about Navy SEALS. I had also read the first installment, The Unsung Hero. I listened to it on audio (so I apologize if some of the spellings below are not perfect). The female narrator was fine.
Most of the action takes place in “Kazbekistan”, where terrorists have forced a hijacked plane to land. The SEALS are in an adjacent hotel, waiting for the signal to move in, should FBI negotiator Max Bhagat fail to secure their surrender. On the plane is hostage Gina Vitagliano, a Long Island native who resembles a young Sophia Loren, who has heroically posed as the US Senator’s daughter whom the terrorists mistakenly believe is on the plane. This Max and Gina storyline was the one that most intrigued me.
The main couple is the “older” (but still in his thirties??), not classically handsome Senior Chief Stan Wolchonok and younger, beautiful Navy Reserve helicopter pilot Lt. Teri Howe. Long attracted to Teri, Stan intercedes on her behalf in a sexual harassment situation. She notices him and returns the attraction. She does have some issues which Stan tenderly helps her work through. But they can’t be together because Stan believes he is “too old” for her, not good looking enough for her, that her motives are hero-worship rather than true love, that he is too set in his ways, that the life of a Navy SEAL is no life for marriage. This reminded me quite a bit of the hero in The Unsung Hero’s conflict. I didn’t find this haphazard set of barriers believable in that book either.
Foulmouthed alpha male Lt. Sam Starrett and lovely, poised FBI sharpshooter Alyssa Locke apparently slept together 6 months prior to the action in Over the Edge, and long for a repeat. But they can’t be together because they have one of those love/hate relationships. I actually have no idea why Alyssa says she doesn’t like Sam, or why she is so resistant to him, but I found their relationship, although immature, at least somewhat compelling.
For some reason, an Israeli envoy named Helga Rosen is flown out. It is never clear to me what the hell she is doing there (yes, the terrorists demand that Israel free their brothers in arms, but why exactly they need Rosen there is a mystery). Much of the book consists of Helga’s memories of the Nazi occupation of Denmark, specifically of doomed lovers Herschel (her brother) and Annabette (Stan’s aunt). She also suffers, very badly, from Alzheimer’s.
I have the same problem with this book that I did with the first Brockmann I read: people who are smart and mature in their jobs become 12 year olds when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. Neither the Stan/Teri nor the Sam/Alyssa conflict made any sense to me at all, although at least the latter was somewhat hot. There was a ton of second, third, and fourth guessing of each other’s motives, little misunderstanding after little misunderstanding, and frankly bizarre interpretations of behavior. Let me ask you: if someone kissed the hell out of you, sticking their tongue in your mouth, breathing heavy, got glassy eyed, panted and clung … how would you interpret that? Well, Stan doesn’t think it signals desire from Teri. And Teri doesn’t think it signals desire from Stan.
My next comment contains a spoiler:
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The book was published in 19912001. Sam, it turns out, got some girl pregnant 12 weeks prior to the start of the action in this book. At the very end, he breaks it off with Alyssa to “do the right thing” and marry his fling. I get that he’s honorable. But honor would involve financially supporting this woman, and being a responsible parent to the child. I find it very hard to believe that anyone could think a loveless marriage is the way to go in this situation. Again, it felt to me like forced conflict. I think having just the pregnancy would have provided enough conflict, actually.
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END SPOILER
I know Brockmann has legions of fans, and I do understand why. I was genuinely gripped at times. I love the egalitarian politics in these books, the writing is very good (read Brockmann discussing an early scene in OTE from a writer’s POV here), and I can appreciate the skill it takes to weave together four different subplots. But I have to be honest: I find the characters and dialogue boring, the conflicts juvenile, the suspense nonexistent (the hijacked plane essentially disappears for large chunks of the book), and the flashbacks irritating. I gave them a shot, but I am sorry to say that the Troubleshooters just don’t work for me.
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#1 by Nicola O. on December 2, 2009 - 12:37 am
Come sit on this bench with me. There seems to be plenty of room.
#2 by Janine on December 2, 2009 - 2:03 am
I have only tried two of her books. One I couldn’t finish and the other well, the less I say about it the better.
#3 by Ana on December 2, 2009 - 4:45 am
Yes, they don’t work for me either for the same reasons you listed.
#4 by Marianne McA on December 2, 2009 - 6:55 am
Just about the spoiler…
My take on this, and I’ve no evidence to support it, is that in Romanceland circa 1991, heroes did marry the girl they knocked up, and always found she was their true love, so that OTE is examining that romance-genre stereotype, rather than referencing the real world.
It’s probably the first (only?) romance I’ve read where the other woman was a character in her own right – and where you see the marriage failing in subsequent books.
I’d say that was one of the things that I really liked about Brockmann – that she does challenge those unremarked Romanceland conventions in her writing.
And the problem with books that are unconventional is that while they may be groundbreaking in their day, if you read them later, when the genre has moved on, they don’t seem so remarkable, because everyone and their mother has now written that storyline.
I do really enjoy Brockmann’s writing, but I’d say OTE is the most-uniformly-loved book, so if you don’t like it, you probably wouldn’t like the rest. (Max and Gina’s book, I didn’t like at all. It’s written with a staggered timeline, which I thought didn’t read well, and I couldn’t understand the bad guys’ motivations.)
#5 by Marianne McA on December 2, 2009 - 7:16 am
Too late to edit. I just ran that through my brain, and realised that 1991 was an insanely long time ago – it was a 2001 release, wasn’t it? I read OTE, I think, the day before the 9/11 attacks – the reference to Osama Bin Laden in the excerpt from ‘Out of Control’ at the back of the book was the first time I’d come across the name.
#6 by Jessica on December 2, 2009 - 7:21 am
@Nicola O.: Oh, thank you! I feel so much better now. Great post.
@Janine: @Ana: Well, then, I am in some excellent company.
@Marianne McA: As you figured out, that’s a typo. The book was published in 2001 (right around 9/11 actually, terrible timing for a book with a terrorist plot – wonder how it sold at first?). But I hear what you are saying: there is “reality” and then there is “romance reality”. Maili calls it “Romlandia” I think.
I do really appreciate the politics in the book, the realistic take on the sorry existence of homophobia and sexism, while refusing to embrace them.
#7 by Sherry Thomas on December 2, 2009 - 9:23 am
@Jessica:
I think about it whenever I think of SEP’s football players marrying their pregnant baby mamas to make the kids legitimate. Tom Brady, anybody?
#8 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on December 2, 2009 - 9:59 am
Tom Brady is a douche. I have never read any Suzanne Brockmann and probably won’t merely for the fact that I prefer historicals and have no time to read for pleasure any more. In conclusion, this just a affirm that a) I love reading reviews and b) that Tom Brady is, in fact, a douche.
#9 by Victoria Janssen on December 2, 2009 - 10:15 am
I haven’t loved the Troubleshooters books as much as I liked Brockmann’s categories, but I still read the new ones when they come out in paperback, and find them pretty involving airplane reading. I also find the ongoing soap opera relationships entertaining, though I have to remind myself what was going on with whom each time a new book in the series comes out. I usually rec them to people who want to read about more diverse characters – she’s pretty good for that.
She’s given up the WWII flashbacks, incidentally. She only did that for about 3 books.
#10 by Jessica on December 2, 2009 - 10:18 am
@Sherry Thomas: I also thought the plotline in Nobody’s baby but mine was incredibly stupid. But my brain goes into the SEP machine when I read her books.
it’s disorienting, like when Willy Wonka rides his charges and their parents down the river singing, “There’s no earthly way of knowing / Which direction we are going / There’s no knowing where we’re rowing / Or which way the river’s flowing / Is it raining? / Is it snowing? / Is a hurricane a-blowing? /
Not a speck of light is showing / So the danger must be growing / Are the fires of hell a-glowing? / Is the grisly reaper mowing? / Yes! The danger must be growing /
For the rowers keep on rowing / And they’re certainly not showing / Any signs that they are slowing!
[screams]
Except with in the SEP book, it’s
There’s no earthly way of knowing/why my penis it keeps growing/when your angry eyes are glowing/and no feminine charms you’re showing.
@Angela/Lazaraspaste: I had made up a snarky quiz in my mind for this review, along the lines of :
After making mad passionate love to you, a man tells you he loves you. You think:
a. He loves me, fab.
b. Uh oh.
c. What? Did he just say “shove”? He wants to shove me? Despite the great sex, loving caresses, and consistent series of events over the past several days which would suggest to any rational person that he is falling in love with me, he must not like me at all. He wants me to get out of here and never come back!! [insert 4 paragraphs of elaborate mental gymnastics to reach this conclusion over and over again] But I know how to fix this!! I will be a cold bitch without telling him why.
If you answered (c) you are a character in a Brockmann book.
#11 by Angela/Lazaraspaste on December 2, 2009 - 12:57 pm
I’ve written several chapters of a novel (tentative title, courtesy of my cousin “Magical Harlots”) and I’m trying not to make my characters do unreasonable things like this but I’ve been shoved (Ha!) around by genre conventions so long that I slip into them thoughtlessly.
The problem, narratively speaking, is that the answer (c) is totally a hold-over from earlier romances when sex was a punishment and you never got into the head of the hero so you had no idea what the heck he was doing. If you are going to have the heroine do something like that you have to have a compelling reason that’s been illustrated earlier. It’s like not letting the audience know the character has the power of invisibility or a magic sock puppet that will get ‘em out of trouble. If it suddenly appears everyone’s going to be all WTF. Which is why I hate the sudden, unreasonable withdrawal of affecitons.
#12 by Jorrie Spencer on December 2, 2009 - 1:50 pm
I misread your tweet and thought you were enthusiastic. Clearly not! I think trying two of her books is more than enough if they’re not working for you. I can agree with what you’re saying, but I loved them anyway. I do really like the diverse characters, even if or perhaps because they’re all Brockmann characters. And I loved her Jules books. And Max before he got his own book. (Okay, I’ll stop there.)
Oh, in future books, she does come up with reasons why Sam marries Mary-Lou beyond what is in OTE. I’m not saying you’d find it convincing though, just that I guess Brockmann recognized that needed more motivation.
#13 by cawm on December 2, 2009 - 6:01 pm
Over the Edge was the last book I read by Brockmann for all the reasons you mentioned. I had enjoyed her Tall, Dark and Dangerous series, in which the main characters were SEALS, but the plots were straight romance. With The Troubleshooters, I felt she had abandoned romance in favor of action-adventure stories, with dubious political content. She also began playing with her readers, dragging out the Sam/Alyssa story for no logical reason. I’ve never felt any interest in reading further books in the series, although I’ve read some discussions of them.
#14 by KristieJ on December 2, 2009 - 6:44 pm
It’s refreshing to see a review of one of her books that doesn’t praise it to high heaven. I read her series books and a few of her single releases. But I became slightly uncomfortable with her ‘politicizing’ her books. Whether I agree 100% with an author or disagree 50% – or whatever, I’m uncomfortable when they start bringing it into the story. That plus her multiple storylines and her story arcs kept me from reading her any further. I don’t feel like having to read 3 or 4 books to get a resolution of a couple.