Review: Inside Threat

After taking two football seasons off, Riley Covington is attempting to make a comeback in the league while trying to forget Khadi Faroughi, now on security detail for a prominent senator.
But a new attack turns both of their lives upside down yet again. During a state funeral, terrorists overrun the National Cathedral and take senators, congressmen, and their entourages hostage, including Khadi. This new generation of The Cause is made up of homegrown terrorists—an inside threat to the security of the nation. They release most of the hostages, but Khadi and several others are kept behind as significant bargaining chips.
The Cause pledges to behead one member of Congress each day throughout the month of Ramadan as a punishment for their own country’s rejection of Islam. Despite the protests of Counter-Terrorism Division director Scott Ross, Riley races to CTD armed with a plan and a fierce determination to rescue Khadi at all costs.

This isn't my normal genre, and I don't often read books of this type, but I liked this one pretty well.  This is part of a series (Book four, I believe), and I hadn't read any of the previous books.  I don't think it's necessary to have read them, except for maybe having a better feel of the characters.  I wasn't as emotionally invested in these characters as I might have been had I read the other books.

The cover says "A Riley Covington Thriller", but I wouldn't say he was necessarily the main character.  He was a main character, but there were others who got equal time, which is a good thing because for most of the book I didn't care for Riley.  He seemed hot-headed, a bit self-centered, and just overall not very likable.  Maybe my view on him would have been different if I had more background on him.  Or if I had read the other books and connected with him as a character I would have been more likely to excuse his faults.  That said, he did turn out okay in the end.

We really didn't dig too dip into the minds of any of the characters, and mostly it was the plot that drove the story.  And it was a pretty good plot--fast moving, and it kept me turning pages.  I think this would definitely be a good one for men to read, as well as women who are into thriller-type books.  This was Christian fiction, and there is religion sprinkled throughout, and it may have even gotten a little heavy handed at times, but it wasn't bothersome, to me.  I give this one a B.

This book was provided for me to review by Tyndale publishers, and I was not compensated in any way for the review.