Great story by John Gilstrap. Really thrilling read, great characters and an enjoyable story. Highly recommend to others!!

A winning thriller for John Gilstrap. I loved the fast paced action, and never ending surprises as is the authors special trademark. The witty repartee and great characters are first class and add depth to the story. Each of this authors books are a thrilling read and this is no exception. Well done to the author. Very entertaining good guys vs. bad guys thriller.

Final Target , book 9 in the popular Jonathan Grave Series by John Gilstrap finds Scorpion, Boxers, and Venice back in an attempt to rescue a DEA agent from the jungles of Mexico where he was kidnapped and was in the process of being tortured. Once rescued, the freelance agents, who do work for the government that isn’t sanctioned and can’t be performed by the government alphabet agencies, Grave and his team find themselves embroiled with a sinister Mexican cartel and an orphanage full of children whose families were tortured and killed in front of their children.

As is the norm for this series, there is a bit of graphic violence in Final Target, but it is fitting with the scenarios, and the bad guys are so bad that they deserve it, especially after what they have done to the good guys. Readers will find that they cannot put the book down. The writing is excellent, the book is fast moving, and the characters are likeable and almost believable (some of the scenarios require super human strength to get the characters out of danger, which is, of course, expected in a well-written spy thriller). Gilstrap’s spy thrillers are as good as, as well as similar to those by Vince Flynn and Brad Thor, and are must reads for aficionados of the genre. Readers will certainly want to pick up the previous books in the series if they haven’t already.

Final Target is entertaining, and although it is fiction, the characters are involved in situations that are probably truer to life than most of us realize. Unfortunately, Mexican drug cartels are real, and Gilstrap’s characters seem to fit well into trying to stop the corruption that they bring on.

Final Target will not only entertain, but will have readers enthralled and fascinated from the first chapter until the very end.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.
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I have only recently discovered John Gilstrap and I'm glad that I finally did. This was the second book I've read in this series and I was thoroughly entertained.

This book was intense with all the action trying to avoid this narcissistic and scary Mexican cartel leader and his legions of thugs. He even had the Mexican police on his side. The orphanage children also played a big role in this book.

Lots of action, plot twists, and characters used to capture the DEA man that had been abducted makes this a great read!

Thanks to Kensington Books and Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Final Target by John Gilstrap
Johnathan Grave #9

I was so excited to receive a copy of this book through NetGalley since I loved the other books I had read in the beginning of the series. I eagerly looked forward to reading it only to have the app to read it with stop working on my computer. So…with diligence I eventually managed to get the app up and running again only to realize that this book, filled with action and people and no doubt a good story was not one that I was up to reading this hot muggy summer. This has happened to me in the past and I remember well being unable to read The Hunt for Red October at one point in time only to devour it a few years later. Not wanting to leave NetGalley and the publisher without a review I did skim a bit and realized that I will enjoy the book in the future…just not before my time to read it in expires. So, I will not give a final star value to the book, since I have not read all of it, but will post this comment and thank NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC they so generously extended to me. From what I did read I would guess my rating would be a minimum of a 3 but more likely a 4 or 5.

Once again, John Gilstrap has sent his operational tagteam of "Scorpion" and "Big Guy" deep into the Mexican jungle where they hate to be. This time to rescue a DEA agent in the hands of a ruthless (are there any other kind?) Mexican drug cartel, but in the process, they end up with a much bigger rescue operation on their hands and much less operational support than they expected.
In this 9th book in the Jonathan Grave series, many things seem familiar to the faithful readers of the series, but whereas this familiarity may be a problem in other series, Gilstrap actually makes it work really well here. Gilstrap manages to bridge the local operational issues with (dirty) high politics in a believable manner, and although character development has never been a top priority in this series, he makes the root for the politically less than correct field operators over and over.
With this book, Gilstrap once again had me hooked from cover to cover, and he proves why he belongs on the top 10 list of my favorite authors these days.

This a dark ops thriller.

Scorpion and Boxer find themselves abandoned in Mexico once they have recovered their DEA hostage. Stumbling on an orphanage the children are now at risk of death by the local drug lord.

Plans are moment by moment and getting everyone to safety means a lot of high tension situations.

Love the Jonathan Graves series.

Phenomenal body count. Action-packed. Amusing repartee keeps the bloodshed from becoming overwhelming. Not the typical cozy mystery that I normally read. I do like to mix it up with some action occasionally. This certainly had plenty. I look forward to reading more in this series, but I will not be snacking during the blood and guts descriptions next time.

Scorpion and Big Guy are sent in to rescue a DEA agent in Mexico. When the op goes south, they find themselves trapped in Mexico, with the PC and a group of orphan's. This is a fast paced adventure, as they try to get across Mexico to a waiting speedboat, while trying to stay ahead of the cartel. The 9th book in the series and still setting high standards.

Another home run from John Gilstrap with "Final Target," the most recent Jonathan Graves thriller with the impeccable pacing, suspense, character development and plotting I have come to expect from this author.

Thank you to Net Galley, The publishers at the author for an ARC Copy.

My first book by this author, okay I know number 9 in the series. But with a chance on Net Galley to read another action author, I had to have a go.

Freelance operative Jonathan Grave faces his fiercest challenge yet in bestselling author John Gilstrap s explosive new thriller . . .

The mission: Drop into the Mexican jungle, infiltrate a drug cartel s compound, and extract a kidnapped DEA agent. But when Jonathan Grave and his partner, Boxers, retrieve the hostage and return to the exfil point, all hell breaks loose. Ambushed, abandoned, and attacked on all sides, their only hope of survival lies inside a remote orphanage where innocent children have been targeted for death.

Even if Grave can lead his precious cargo to safety across a hundred miles of treacherous jungle filled with enemies, he can t shake the feeling that something bigger is at play. A vast conspiracy of international power players who take no prisoners and leave no survivors . . .

Good points and bad points.

Well the first one is my own fault starting on book number nine in the series.

Bad point is I have just finished Brad Thor and Ben Coes books which were both five stars, okay this author is good, but a step below the above mentioned.

This book started at a reasonably slow pace, from a story point of view, and for me getting to know the characters, they grew on me.

The pace did build half way through and kept at a good pace, with some good tension and some great action.

One character I really liked was Thomas, he really grew on me throughout the book. Enjoyed the sub stories especially with Gail, and the relationship between Bomber and Scorpion(Grave)

A four star book from me. Maybe I should read the first eight!

It was a action packed thriller till the end. I think it could make a good action movie

I do love a good adventure novel and have enjoyed the entire Johnathan Graves series. I wasn't keen on this book as it started like so many others, a search and rescue in the jungle and turns into "an escape from the jungle and drug lords" novel. However, in my opinion it developed into a novel that gives the reader more insight into Digger's character than any previous novels. Gail returns and there is some information shared about their relationship past and perhaps future? The adventure in this novel is not as fast paced as in others, but it introduces new characters in Tomas, Jesse and Dave that I hope we see again. While Digger and Boxer are trying to get out of the jungle, Gail is working the mystery in the US trying to learn more about the precious cargo (PC), the drug trade and political activities. In the end, the novel is satisfying and leaves me waiting for the next one to be published.

This is the first John Gilstrap novel I've read but it won't be the last. With well researched military procedures, this is a fast paced, plot driven novel with great characters.