Deep Black: A Tom Locke Novel

Sean McFate’s Deep Black is the second novel in his Tom Locke series. Tom Locke, a former US soldier, is now a private military contractor. Locke and his team are in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region when a Saudi man approaches them and offers them a large sum of money to find a member of the Saudi royal family who has gone missing. Broke and without a job, Locke and his team jump at the chance. However, as the mission to find the Saudi prince gets under way, the mercenaries soon realize there is much more to the story than meets the eye. As they probe further, they come across a secretive Saudi plot to acquire nuclear weapons and change the balance of power in the Middle East.

Like in the previous novel, Shadow War, Sean McFate brings his expertise as a soldier as well as his knowledge of international relations (he has a PhD in the field) to his latest book to make the story as realistic as possible. There is lots of political intrigue as well as non-stop action. The author likewise develops his characters to a great extent. The reader becomes familiar with the characters’ demons as well as the heavy toll it takes to be a private military contractor, feeling danger every second.