ARC REVIEW IQ by Joe Ide

A modern day Sherlock Holmes, if he was born in the California Ghettos. IQ is the nickname they gave Isaiah Quintabe after he solved a very sensitive and exposing blackmailing scheme involving a rapper which he later published in a major magazine. Isaiah is a brilliant young man who at a young age tested above genius but due to circumstances out of his control it lead him on a path of destruction. You can see elements of Sherlock in the story his brother Marcus (Mycroft), his friend and I use the term loosely Dodson (Watson), and even Goliath (the Hound of Baskerville) along with Isaiah's deductive skills are that of Sherlock. This modern day almost realistic Sherlock is one of the best I've seen.

The story really starts off with a bang, it pulled you in and shows you how good Isaiah is at what he does. From then on it ping pongs back and forth between 2005-06 and 2013. It shows the progression of how Isaiah became what he is and most importantly why. The two timelines have nothing to do with each other but the past timeline does slowly reveal more about Isaiah and Dodson and their ambiguous friendship. In the modern timeline Dodson has come back to Isaiah with a high profile job. It's all hush hush but it promises a very nice paycheck. The rapper Calvin "Black the Knife" Wright has had a very curious assassination attempt, a very large dog almost killed him. Cal is determined to find out who tried to kill him, especailly if it's his ex-wife. Isaiah agreed to the job and no matter that everyone is trying to talk him out of it or stump him Isaiah isn't going to stop until he finds out the truth. Through the years Isaiah has made plenty of contact and through those contacts he is able to unravel the whole mystery.

The story is third person but does switch perspective throughout the list of characters even the assassin, but you don't find out the whodunit until the very end. Overall, I really truly enjoyed this one and I hope there are more stories about IQ to come.      

ARC REVIEW: SEAL Team Six Hunt the Fox by Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo

Book Five of Seal Team Six. Thomas Crocker is back and in a race against time and the terrorist known as the Fox. Unlike the other books this one wasn't as high intensity and edge of your seat. Was it good? Hell yes, just not quite as good as the last book. Don Mann and Ralph Pezzullo as always bring you into the SEAL Team Six team takes you on a wild ride with the emotional side that humanizes the soldiers and gives an insight on to why Tom makes the decisions he does.

Months after the incident in Mexico, Tom and the rest of his team are ready to jump back in and get back to work. Their first mission is a doozy. They have received pictures of sarin canisters being kept in Syria they must now extract without the knowledge of ISIS or the FSA. But it all goes a little too smoothly aside from having to take a detour and taking on extra passengers, refugees from the Syrian civil war and Tom having to help a woman give birth. Once they get to safety the sarin goes missing along with the contact who leads them to the sarin. Not willing to walk away from the FUBAR situation Tom and his team help the local government try and track down the sarin but it soon pops up as the terrorist hijacked a Disney cruise liner.

All the while Tom deals with saving the day with his team he tries to deal with personal problems of his wife being fed up with being married to a Navy SEAL. During the whole book Tom goes back and remembers time with his wife the first time they met and when he fell in love to more recent ones of them meeting with a therapist, and in the end he knows what he should do. He is also still dealing with the traumatic last mission.

This is a must read for followers of the series it's not to be missed. It's not good as the last book but by no means bad, it was riveting and intense it's what I expect from a SEAL Team Six series.