I'm very excited to share with you my review of this fabulous book by colleague and fellow drug war observer, Fred Burton! While the subject matter of Chasing Shadows admittedly has nothing to do with Mexico, I know many of you are very familiar with Mr Burton and his work, so I wanted to share a glimpse into his latest work. I can tell you now, you're going to have a hard time putting it down! Here's a summary:
"On a warm Saturday night in July 1973 in Bethesda Maryland, a gunman stepped out from behind a tree and fired five point-blank shots into Joe Alon, an unassuming Israeli Air Force pilot and family man. Alon's sixteen-year-old neighbor, Fred Burton, was deeply shocked by this crime that rocked his sleepy suburban neighborhood. As it turned out, Alon wasn't just a pilot—he was a high-ranking military official and with intelligence ties. The assassin was never found and the case was closed. In 2007, Fred Burton—who had since become a State Department counterterrorism special agent—reopened the case. Here, Burton spins a gripping tale of the secret agents, double dealings, terrorists and heroes he encounters he chases leads around the globe in an effort to solve this decades-old murder. From swirling dogfights over Egypt and Hanoi to gun battles on the streets of Beirut, this action-packed thriller looks in the dark heart of the Cold War to show power is uses, misused, and sold to the most convenient bidder."
In Chasing Shadows, Mr Burton weaves the narrative of the mystery surrounding Alon's assassination with pieces of Middle Eastern and American military history in a really gripping way. It all serves as background and context for his investigation into Alon's murder, but it filled so many gaps in my knowledge of Israel's conflicts with its neighbors in the 1970s. As a former Air Force officer, I was thrilled to learn about the evolution of and challenges to our air combat skills as a result of Vietnam and the Cold War. Again, all these historical tidbits are interspersed seamlessly with the drama of Alon's cold case. I saw the movie Munich, so I knew about the murders of Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympic Games. Yet, only after reading this book did I truly understand the full international context of those murders by Black September.
One of the best things about Chasing Shadows is its readability. Mr Burton is a great storyteller, and he very clearly draws connections and relationships between people and events so that readers can easily see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together. He also allows readers to feel the pain of the Alon family from not having their questions answered by the Israeli government, and the frustration he felt over three decades of running into brick walls every time he tried to get answers from our own government. Mr Burton explains critical historical events like the Six-Day War and various operations during Vietnam in a way that makes readers say, "Oh, now I get it." The whole combination of history and the Alon murder investigation reads like something straight out of Hollywood; yet all the events really happened.
If you have any interest at all in international affairs, world history, espionage, Middle Eastern terrorist groups, or just want to read a gripping, thrilling book that you just can't put down or wait to read what happens next, then Chasing Shadows is definitely for you! Check out the video trailer for the book below, or to visit the Amazon.com web page for it, please CLICK HERE.
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