scorpion winter

I'm pretty sure this is the third in the Scorpion series by Andrew Kaplan. I started with the second one a few month ago: Scorpion Betrayal. I guess there is an original, called Scorpion, but I haven't seen it, and my library doesn't have it.* I'll have to find it though, because this one was good, but not as good as the second one, so I'm guessing that the pattern works backward to awesome at the first one. va bene cosi?

Scorpion is a pretty kick-ass (and don't-bother-taking-names) kind of guy. What's nice is that his heart is in the right place, but unlike similar characters, like Steve Berry's Cotton Malone, Scorpion isn't the reluctant hero necessarily. If there is some ass kicking that needs to be done, or even a little private justice, Scorpion does what he thinks needs to be done. This makes Scorpion harder, and a little rougher around the edges; more similar to Lee Child's Jack Reacher.

Kaplan tells a good story, but this one didn't wrap up as cleanly as it could have. There was a bit of an info dump at the end, that helped to fill in some of the backstory. There had to be a better way to incorporate this information, or maybe just leave it out. Word is that the next in the series will be Scorpion Deception.


* Scorpion is copyrighted in 1987, 25 years ago. That's probably why I can't find it. Maybe it didn't make a splash then, or maybe it did and my library just weeded it years ago. Maybe the Scorpion revival is a personal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of one of the author's favorites.