Shadow War

Starred review from March 7, 2016
At the start of army veteran McFate’s smart, exciting first novel and series launch—written with Witter (The Monuments Men, with Robert M. Edsel)—mercenary Tom Locke and his team rendezvous in the Libyan desert with a tribe of Tuareg who have two trucks full of antiaircraft missiles and other valuable weapons to sell. When bandits suddenly attack, the resourceful Locke prevails in the ensuing firefight. Back in Washington, D.C., Locke’s boss at security giant Apollo Outcomes gives him an assignment in the Ukraine, where he’s to craft a newsworthy military victory for an Apollo client, oligarch and parliamentarian Kostyantyn Karpenko. Locke knows the Russians in Ukraine will try to stop him, and the time frame is only five days, but this is the sort of mission impossible that he loves. Locke’s careful planning and the resulting battles combine to elevate this book well above the standard military thriller. Readers will look forward to seeing a lot more of Locke. Agent: Peter McGuigan, Foundry Literary + Media.

December 1, 2015

Tom Locke's new assignment from his private contracting firm is a black op in Ukraine made even more dangerous by his boss's penchant for pitting power brokers worldwide against one another. McFate, who now teaches strategy at the university level, once ran covert military missions, while Witter cowrote several New York Times best sellers. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2016
A veteran paratrooper and military contractor's debut novel about an American mercenary on a covert operation in Ukraine. With experience inside the elite 82nd Airborne division and work as a private contractor, McFate (The Modern Mercenary, 2015) knows the world of his first thriller intimately. His hero, Tom Locke, works as a mercenary for private contracting firm Apollo Outcomes. Although Locke and his team of "Tier One" operators (former members of the world's elite Special Forces units) usually work in North Africa, he is asked by Apollo's management to lead a Ukrainian revolt against Vladimir Putin's Russian forces and place a rich oligarch into a strategic position of leadership. Locke's mission is part of a high-ranking Apollo executive's plan to get direct access to the oil fields of Ukraine. Unfortunately for Locke and his team, there's a possibility that this grand scheme may take precedence over their safety. This Ukrainian assignment is complicated further when Locke meets an old flame from the distant past who works as an investigative reporter and is bringing an incompetent CIA case officer in tow. With all these elements at play, the novel provides plenty of drama and a realistic view of political intrigue, and McFate really shines with lines that ring with authenticity. For instance, while sitting at a hotel bar in Kiev, Locke reflects: "I could sit perfectly at ease at a bar in a strange part of the world and use the reflections in the backsplash to pigeonhole everyone in the room." A promising debut from an author who clearly knows the realities of the mercenary's trade.

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March 15, 2016
McFate worked with DynCorp International, an elite 82nd Airborne division of the U.S. Army, and Amnesty International, and he puts that experience to good use in the creation of Tom Locke, a private military contractor who works behind the scenes in potential hot zones. In this debut thriller, Locke is working in Libya when he's ordered to Ukraine for a top-secret mission. His assignment is to rescue a businessman, but it's much more complicated than that, thanks to a boss with ulterior motives and to the realization that one false move could lead to war between Russia and the United States. Distractions also come in the form of Locke's former girlfriend, whom he has never stopped loving. McFate and coauthor Witter take the reader on a gripping journey inside the world of modern warfare and espionage, and those who enjoy a good military thriller will be hoping that more Tom Locke adventures will follow quickly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)