Book Review: The Solomon Effect by C.S. Graham

Human history is interwoven the theme of the supernatural and of those who searched for ways to harness its power. Just do a Google search for “ancient magic texts” and you’ll find long-forgotten volumes, testimony to the past attempts to harness the power of the invisible world. But the hopes of tapping into the hidden forces of magic did not die with the age of science. During the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union are said to have invested money and brain power into attempts at figuring out how to harness these mysterious forces.

That such forces are real and that the secret U.S. program was more than fantasy is the assumption behind the series of thrillers by C.S. Graham. The Solomon Effect continues the story of October Guiness, a remote viewer who first made her appearance in The Archangel Project, as she faces a conspiracy that aims to bring back the lost Nazi technologies of death in order to wipe out millions.

Guiness is activated when her unit is tasked, by no less than the vice-president himself, with finding the location of a vanished Nazi submarine U-114, believed to be part of a terrorist plot. A remote viewing session turns up a lead — Kalinigrad, the isolated Russian enclave on the Baltic coast, as the sub’s location. But October is concerned that her lead will not be fully exploited by whoever the CIA decides to send into the field. To assure that they get as much out of it as possible, she proposes going into Kaliningrad herself. She ends up going with Jax Alexander, master spy, at her side.

October and Jax arrive to a warm welcome from a “friend” who just happens to be a Russian FSB colonel. The Russian spy insists on accompanying the two to their destination. But the information about the sub that October and Jax were originally given turns out to be false, for the mysterious sub seems to have been carrying something much more dangerous than they expected. Before the duo have a chance to thoroughly examine the sub, the minions of a shadowy Major blow up the submarine. Guiness and Alexander find themselves on the run from the Major’s men.

Pursued by the Major’s assassins, October and Jax criss-cross Europe and the Middle East in search of clues to the deadly secret of the mysterious Nazi sub. What was its cargo and how does it figure in the impending terrorist plot? One reversal follows another as October and Jax work to unravel the mystery of U 114 and the more October and Jax learn, the more sinister truths they uncover, quickly discovering that home-grown terrorists are just as dangerous as their foreign counterparts. Tension remains taunt until the very end and The Solomon Effect is a nice entertaining action thriller with a supernatural theme and a dark enough conspiracy.