Scarecrow Returns!

I've just finished Matthew Reilly's lastest novel Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (or as the Americans call it Scarecrow Returns).  Sometimes you need a book that allows you to check your brain out and just be entertained and Reilly does that. He will not win a Booker Prize and the literati will turn their noses up at his efforts but I enjoy them.

If you are unfamiliar with his work he writes over-the-top Hollywood popcorn SFX heavy action movies as books. Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger, the villains are preposterous, the plots unbelievable, the heroes death-defying (well, most of the time) and there are lots and lots of explosions, stunts and gunfire.

Take the latest book, a renegade army of terrorists takes control of a secret Russian Arctic base and threatens to set the atmosphere on fire using a captured Soviet doomsday weapon*. Oh and the hero has just an hour to stop them!

Yes, they are silly, but they are entertainingly silly and that is all Reilly wants to do, entertain. He does in spades.

I'm not sure if the books would wargameable, I suppose 7TV would be the way to go as opposed to Force on Force, but you would have some great fun doing it.

If you haven't read a Scarecrow book start at the beginning with Ice Station. You don't need to have read the previous three books (and novella) but they are also great fun and they are referenced in the Army of Thieves...

* now that is what James Bond plots should have, not lost laptops!