The novel is basically about Carl Lyons on a plane ride to Miami. The beginning has someone being tortured with a vice grip as a plot device to get him on the plane. Once off the plane, the author surprises the reader with an Able Team fight scene featuring a .50 Barrett Sniper Rifle. The weapon, in a bit of well-timed synergy, presented in the back of the book complete with stats. A quick reference guide, if you will.
A great deal of emotional buildup, with flashbacks and introspection fills up the pages during Lyons’s journey westward. A lot of the other extraneous scenes just begged for someone to rise up and shout, “Objection your honor, Irrelevant.” Unfortunately the buildup slowly and heads to only one warmed up fight scene. The last thirty-forty pages is powerful stuff, but I suspect any fight scene would be after all of that foreshadowing, retrospection and frantic flying across the country. For some reason I really like his prose, so the book was tolerable for me even though it was an unfortunate mess.
I recently reviewed Skysniper here, which numbers as one of my all-time favorite Executioner novels. A short time after the review was posted it was pointed out to me that the author of Skysniper, Chuck Rogers, had also written the Able Team novel Miami Crush. That was both surprising and ironic to me, as I had read Miami Crush literally the day before I started Skysniper, and if I had known Chuck Rodgers had written Miami Crush I would never have touched Skysniper or any other book he wrote, as it numbers among the worst novels I’ve ever read set in Mack Bolan’s world.
Where to begin with the horror that is Miami Crush? I’ll start with the prologue, seven pages of throwaway background that does nothing for the story. Truth to tell, I tried to read Miami Crush several months ago, but the beginning was so slow that I found myself putting it aside and forgetting about it until recently. So I finally slogged through the opening, wondering how the Pinto family and their tribulations would tie into the main story, only to find their connection to it was so minor that all the pages describing them could have been thrown out with no loss to the book. I normally like it when authors give backstory to characters and places in stories, but here it just felt like it was filler.
Speaking of filler, the entire sequence with Judge Meyer went nowhere as well. Rodgers did something similar in Skysniper, come to think of it, introducing a villain who seems to have been totally forgotten about by the end of the novel. The same thing happens here, but whereas in Skysniper the distancing of the forgotten villain from his allies helped to explain why he survived and no one was worried about him, here we have someone who is face to face with one of the members of Able Team and who we have to read many pages describing his lack of morals, yet nothing happens to him. Maybe Rodgers planned to bring him back in a later book, and wanted to introduce him here, but if so he spent far too much time in Miami Crush doing so. Or maybe this book ran far over its intended length, and Meyer wasn’t edited out as he should have been.
As for the focus of the books, I’ve only read a small portion of the Able Team series, but 2/3rds of them feel as though they should called “The Adventures of Carl Lyons and Some Other Guys” rather than “Able Team”. This one was no exception, with us getting treated to extended views of Lyons’ views on Julie, their relationship, his dating in general, and pretty much anything else about the character that Rodgers could think of so he didn’t have to write about Pol and Gadgets. I probably wouldn’t have minded this much, but as I said this Lyons fixation has been in nearly every Able Team book I’ve read so far, so I found it very annoying.
Hal also seemed off in his brief appearances in the book. His manipulations of Lyons, keeping him in the dark at first about the death of his CI, even the descriptions of his mannerisms seemed unlike anything I’ve read in any Bolanverse novel.
Finally, I was a little confused by the author’s desire to make the reader care about Lyons’ old CI. Unless I’m misreading something the CI killed Allan Ball and was using his car and checking account as he tried to hide from the enforcer hunting him down. Why are we supposed to care about somebody who, when his past caught up to him, turned to murder and impersonation of the dead to survive? Was Ball supposed to be a bad guy, so the CI killing him was okay? We don’t get any evidence in the book of that, so all I can figure was that Ball was just some guy the CI killed to make his life easier, and that makes Lyons’ desire for the CI to have justice done for him seem a bit, well, dumb.
Unless you’re a completest, or just want to read a book so bad that it makes your blood pressure go up, I recommend avoiding Miami Crush.
I really enjoyed this book. I don't know, but when has characterization, backstory, and a fully fleshed out universe became lame filler.
There wasn't much action, but there was plenty of plot going on, and if this had been any other series, this would have been a top notch thriller.
Ah well. I thought this was fun enough to read through three times.
This book has about 60 pages plot (at best) 160 filler.
This should be a lesson 220 pages is not 500. 220 pages should be used wisely and with economy.
1) What in god's name was the point of 20+ pages of Judge Mayer and his lust for the court reporter? Was he really just a criminal's dream judge or was he being bought off? I don't know. Does Chuck Rogers know?
2) Why did we have to read pages 38-126? No reason to. Sure he found out about his former snitch/friend being killed but wouldn't it have been wiser if Hal sent him the letter and to verify if the dead man was his snitch? Why send in him Judge Mayer's courtroom.
3) Did we need 25 pages of Lyon sitting in a plane thinking of his time with a counselor when he fired his first bullet. Plus his opinion of Miami. It added nothing to the plot.
4) The bad guy Lola showed up with 20 pages to go and boom a shootout. At least 4 pages were devoted to how the guns work and how a bullet leaves a M-82 and something about Kentucky wind.
5) What happened to the FBI traitor? Was he caught later on? What happened to Judge Mayer and his lust for the court reporter? Was he paid? What happened to Lola's boss. Who tipped off the Cubans to AT's drug buy?
6) Is Chuck Rogers the First as opposed to our own Chuck the worst of the worst GE writers? Yes.
Avoid, avoid, avoid. I have book 31 and seriously debating not reading it and just turning it in for trade.
The only reason this boring slop of sewage rates a 2 star is because it's better than #47 Renegade Agent, the only book in the bolan universe at 1 star material. Avoid this yawner at all costs. I think I'm gonna skip AT #30 and #31, those were written by the same writer.
The A team meets miami vice artwork on the cover is kinda cheesy too.
