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The story told in FADE by Kyle Mills initially seems…well, familiar. A Special Ops guy --- in this case, a Navy SEAL --- is retired, quietly living his life and attempting to exorcise his personal and professional demons, when Uncle Sam comes calling, wanting to bring him in for one last mission. The ex-op, who is the best ever at what he does, refuses. The government tries to force him into it, and things go downhill from there, with the ex-op taking on the Army, or a town, or whatever. Like I said, it sounds familiar. At first. But FADE cannot be dismissed as another Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. By the time movies like Commando or First Blood end, FADE is just getting warmed up.
Fade is Salam Al Fayad, an off-the-scale soldier who was forced to retire as the result of a grievous gunshot wound sustained in the line of duty. A bureaucratic snafu denied him the medical attention he needed; as a result, the bullet lies buried in scar tissue near his spine, causing him irrevocable nerve damage and bringing him closer to paralysis with each passing day. When Homeland Security decides to create a covert military surgical strike team, a career bureaucrat named Hillel Strand thinks that Fade is just the man for the job and assists on recruiting him, over the objections of Matt Egan. Egan, who had worked with Fade in the field and was at one time Fade's best friend, is well aware of Fade's bitterness toward his former employer --- a bitterness that includes Egan, who Fade blames (incorrectly) for the denial of his medical treatment.
Strand and Egan nonetheless approach Fade, who is living in solitude, eking out a living by building and repairing furniture while stoically awaiting the paralysis that will eventually result from his injury. When Fade predictably rebuffs the pair, Strand engineers a wrong-headed operation that sends a local police SWAT team to arrest Fade on trumped-up charges, a maneuver that is supposed to force Fade back into the fold of the U.S. government. Fade, however, believes that the SWAT team invading his home is actually an assassination squad, and successfully wipes out the entire crew, save for one: Karen Manning, the SWAT team leader, who is quickly taken hostage by Fade. Manning slowly begins to realize that Fade was set up, but it is too late.
Strand, hoping to cover up his duplicity in the action that has gone so horribly wrong, has set the might and majesty of the Federal Government against Fade. Well aware that his days are numbered, Fade has only his wits and planning abilities to aid him in his final quest, which is to obtain the ultimate revenge against Strand.
It would be easy to classify FADE as an extremely entertaining novel; indeed, it is a fast-paced work, one during which the reader never knows what will happen from one moment to the next. But Mills brings an element of moral ambivalence to the work that places it several steps above the garden variety explosions-and-karate one normally encounters in the genre. Almost all of the primary characters in FADE --- with the exception of Strand, and one other, whom we do not meet until the end of the book --- are innocents, cast against each other in a deadly dance where fates seem preordained and no one escapes entirely unscathed.
FADE, in its way, is a modern re-telling of the Frankenstein myth, done up in geopolitical dress and given a new relevance for our times. While there is plenty of action here for fans of the thriller genre, there is much for thoughtful, if disturbing, reflection as well. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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