An easy review really

If you liked the author’s previous book and Netflix series ‘The Night Agent’ and if you love espionage within a supposed safer than safe Dept of the Government and the Whitehouse then this book is for you

Also if you like to read of deep safe havens for Presidents, this time Raven Rock, and the workings, in detail, that make it so safe…..and then it is breached again it is for you

Finally if you like claustrophobic escape rooms while the occupants are being hunted alongside unstoppable men and women who will do anything for their Country whilst via a whodunit style rooting out the other unstoppables intent on causing WW3 then this book is a must

If none of the above appeals then its not for you

I loved it and hope this follows into a Netflix series too

This book is a fast paced political thriller. Some of the characters are instantly memorable whilst others not so much. Luckily there was a run down at the beginning of the book to refer to - along with a map of the layout of the main area of the drama. However this maybe easily accessible for book readers, but not for me on my kindle. Ultimately I worked out the main protagonists and just went with the author’s descriptions of the tunnels etc. This book would make a good film and I’m sure Netflix or similar will be optioning it soon. I liked the fact that up until quite far into the book the reader doesn’t know who to believe; who was on whose side, who was a good guy and who was a baddie.

Matthew Quirk’s Inside Threat is another political thriller with non stop action with the main target being the President himself.

The threats keep coming from the first page to the last which keeps the pages turning.

Recommended if you like an adrenaline rush.

A very enjoyable book despite the number of dead bodies. Although fairly typical of the genre, this book rattles on at a fast pace and is well written. After an attack on the President at the White House, he is moved to a secure underground location of Raven Rock Complex. Rather than being safely locked in, an assassin is also locked with them. Amidst a lot of shooting, who do you trust? Quirk thankfully supplies a map of the complex. Even being somewhat far fetched, it's a great read.

If you loved The Night Agent you will love this wild, action packed page turner of a book. The same author wrote this one and it is clear he knows his stuff on the secret service and all things POTUS. I couldn’t get through this one fast enough.

The White House has been breached and the President and trusted members of the secret service vacate to the maximum security Raven Rock Mountain Complex. It might be a safe place to be, but when the threat is coming from inside their own ranks, nobody is safe.

This book is intense and will have you on the edge of your seat. Who can be trusted? Why is one of their own trying to take down the most powerful man in the world?

Thanks so much to Aria and Aries, Head of Zeus and NetGalley for my advanced copy to read. . Published on April 11th.

Interesting plot and clearly well researched but a little simplistic and plodding for my tastes. I can see others enjoying it though

The president is forced to flee to the safety of his underground bunker when the White House is breached. He takes along his trusted secret service and a few officials.
Erik Hill is one of these trusted agents, a man whose dedicated his career to the secret service, and he convinced something doesn’t smell right and thinks the president could be in perilous danger, in the most secure place imaginable.
As the conspiracy unravels Hill must move fast if he is going to save his president and his country. But can he do it in time.
I read this book in a couple of sittings.
It’s a fast paced, high octane thriller, with a main character you will cheer on throughout the book.
I’ve read pretty much everything Matthew Quirk has written and he never lets the reader down.
This is what thriller writing is all about, I loved it.

Matthew Quirk is an author who specialises in Secret Service based novels - from the likes of Hour of the Assassin and The Night Agent - and the Netflix adaptation has probably brought him to a wider audience with this, his new novel Inside Threat, which follows a e secret service team protecting the President at the Raven Rock Mountain Complex as they flee the White House.from an assassination attempt.
The book starts with a long list of characters and various maps of the location we encounter in the book. Whether this approach appeals or causes a whiff of concern will depend on the reader.
It's certainly a big list of characters - 24 named in the 'foreword' and in a paper version it might be that I'd have flicked back to check occasionally who was who as they did get a little mixed up in my mind.
The bottom line is this read like a movie (again, whether a reader sees this as a good thing or not will be down to the individual) and there have been a few movies in this vein (The Sentinel, Airforce One. Whitehouse Down, Olympus has Fallen and its sequels,) and then the surface similarities with In the Line of Fire (With a seasoned Secret Service Agent who was involved with 'something that went wrong', a female operative on her first day) don't go unnoticed - the author even references that particular movie.
All this is to say, this is a strong action story that reads as if it could be turned into a screenplay - albeit a reasonably familiar one to a viewer/ reader familiar with the genre tropes.
It started well for me but did get a little bit repetitive once the story moved to the 'safe' complex. There's a whole lot of gun play but not quite enough variation around the 'oh character X is a bad guy as well' and ensuing firefight. To this end, there weren't any 'twists' as such and the storyline was less complex than some of the author's previous works - and it got a little bit too tropey for me.
I'm sure many readers looking for a good 'action adventure' will appreciate this and I'm guessing networks are already looking a the book with thoughts of adaptation.

Sometimes the best way to describe a work of art is in terms of other similar works. In the case if Matthew Quirk’s latest thriller, the easiest way to sum it is as Die-Hard-in-a-bunker-crossed-with-Air-Force-One. If that is what you are up for – a President in danger, a protagonist who has something to prove, plenty of gun play and explosions in enclosed spaces, crawling through ducts, double crossing at every turn – then Inside Threat absolutely ticks all the boxes.
Inside Threat opens with an assassination attempt in the White House. Disgraced former presidential secret service agent Eric Hill has been demoted to desk duty but cannot help himself when he sees things starting to go South. Similarly, rookie agent Amber Cody, the daughter of Hill’s old partner who died in the line of duty, throws herself into the fray and gets herself noticed. So both are taken along when the President and his retinue decamp to the apparent safety of Raven Rock, a (real) underground bunker complex built during the Cold War deep enough in a mountain to withstand a nuclear blast. Only once they get there they find themselves not only locked in but under assault from turncoat agents who have been led to believe that the President has been taking out his political opponents.
The rest plays out exactly as can be expected from a thriller of this type. Things start off grey but slowly both Hill, Cody and the reader learn who to trust (which does not prevent a couple of heel turns late in the game). And as they do, both the danger and the stakes increase. Quirk keeps the tension high as the body count mounts and various structures are blown up. That said, Inside Agent can also be read as a cautionary tale about fake news and the weaponisation of false information. In that respect it has a solid, and in some ways post-January 6, believable premise for a political thriller.
Quirk is probably best known now for his book The Night Agent, turned into a bingeable if reasonably forgettable series om Netflix. That story also revolved around an agent trying to live up to the image of his father and evil doings at the heart of the White House. So Quirk has form, he knows the rules of this type of thriller and deploys them effectively, ensuring readers are too caught up in the latest firefight or explosion to worry too much about plot or motive.

This book was tense, and exciting from the beginning. There is however, quite a lot of names and explanations in the set up which I found I had to concentrate hard to follow.
There is a lot of running between buildings, AB and C, which is quite difficult to follow during the explosive action in the middle of the novel
Essentially this is quite a blokey book I was interested it as the author wrote the Bodyguard which I enjoyed on tv otherwise I don’t think I would’ve picked the book up in the first place. ultimately, not a book for me really.
I read an early copy on NetGalley UK, the book was published in the UK on 13th of June 2023 by William Morrow
This review will appear on NetGalley, UK, good reads, and my blog bionicsarahsbooksWordPress.Com

When there is a breach in the White House security experienced secret service agent Erik Hill advises the President Kline to take Airforce One and go up in the sky. The president however doesn't heed this advise and listens to the advice of some of his nearest staff members and flees to a secret doomsday bunker from the cold war period, named Raven Rock. This facility has maximum security measures like double multi ton acces doors that work like an access lock and are build to withstand an atomic blast, a fully operational command and communication centre, etcetera.

Pretty soon however the president and his guards discover that access measures that are developed too keep an atomic blast out of the facility are also an insurmountable obstacle to get out of the facilities when it turns out that the attack on the White House was only a decoy to get the president, his wife and a couple of staff and his protection detail to the Raven Rock bunker by a coalition of politicians and secret service agents who are trying to commit a coup. With no one in the clear who belongs to the good guys and who the bad guys (or dolls) are, except for the bad ones off course, Erik Hill is trusting no one, not even the President. Step by step Hill and the others discover that they are cut off from communications with the outside world while in the meantime faithful secret service agents are getting killed. When they discover that the blast doors have been sabotaged Hill and the president with a couple of faithful agents have to find a way out of the complex while at the same time they are threatened by the bad guys who seem to hold all the cards, well at least almost all the weapons, explosives etc.
I found this book a fast paced thriller although sometimes a bit repetitive in al the skirmishes that are going on in the tunnels, buildings, etcetera. Therefore 4 stars, not 5.
I want to thank Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I have been a fan of Matthew Quirk since reading The 500. I have no doubt that there will be a Netflix adaptation of this book. It is fast paced and I can't remember the last time I read a book that I couldn't put down. A real treat.

Another enjoyable read from Matthew Quirk, I've always had a soft spot for US political thrillers involving the President, the West Wing or capitol hill!

Inside Threat is only my second book from author Matthew Quirk that I've had the pleasure of reading, the first one was Night Agent and I read that before the series on tv was released. I absolutely loved that thriller, it had everything for me. With this latest offering I found it a mixed bag if I'm honest - the plot was great and the writing as good as I found in the previous book but for me, I struggled with the location, Raven Rock.

I found the scenes a little to confusing to follow reading on the kindle. I think if I had read the thriller on a physical book I would have kept turning to the map at the beginning of the book but not as easy on the kindle. I couldn't quite follow the planning and where each scene was set.

That said, Quirk's writing is so descriptive that it didn't really matter. Sure it made me think and slowed my reading down a little but the end result was the same - I enjoyed it

You never quite know who's good and who's bad in this one until the very end, something I liked because it kept me on my toes!

Definitely one to read.

‘Inside Threat’ by Matthew Quirk was a tense thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout. Someone is out to get the President – or are they? Trapped in an underground bunker, a disgraced CIA agent needs to isolate the danger lurking in the shadows but who can he trust? This was a fast and furious action-packed read, which kept me guessing until the end.

An action packed thriller that had me on the edge of my seat. The character is a badass and was well developed. I wouldn't want to cross paths with him.

Thanks to Netgalley and the author for the ARC. All views are my own.

Assume the worst. Code Black

the President is taken to an underground bunker for his and the nations safety nobody could imagine the place intended to keep him safe is the most dangerous place he could be. Who can be trusted and how can they escape?

I was instantly drawn to this as I loved the Night Agent and whilst it got off to a fast pace and great start it started to slow down for me. It felt repetitive and drawn out once they got to the bunker but I had to read on to see how it all ended. I did really like Erik’s character. Enjoyable read but it could have been so much more. Thanks to @netgalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Publication Date - 11/04/2024

⭐️⭐️⭐️

#InsideThreat
#MatthewQuirk
#NetGalley

“Trust no one”
The president is under attack and Eric Hill is hellbent on stopping them. An inside job, Hill has no idea who he can trust. But can he keep the president alive?

An action packed book, full of drama and suspense. I think it would be more suited to screen though, the scenes at Raven Rock got a little confusing at times with all the talk of the tunnels and buildings. It got a little repetitive.

I did enjoy the action and the storyline though, and Cody made a good accomplice to Hill. I really didn’t guess who was on which side and didn’t trust anyone!

Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for my advanced copy.

This action thriller has a great premise and started off really well with exciting action and intrigue,
Then the location moved to an underground bunker called Raven Rock and it went downhill fairly quickly after that. The problem for me was too many boring and repetitive over descriptive details of people moving around in the tunnels and caverns. This info is good for film makers to know but was not required in such detail and the pace slowed too much. I considered giving up but chose to carry on because every now and then the pace and intrigue picked up and then dropped off again, imagine a series of short peaks and long troughs.

To give you a feel for the location there are two main tunnels north to south and five caverns housing five buildings A to E and a maze of smaller interconnecting tunnels. The buildings are supposedly supported on springs tall enough for people to walk beneath, which they do a lot, either chasing attackers or being chased.

The main character Erik is a jaded heroic secret service agent whose character is well developed. Unfortunately the rest of the cast were not well developed. The motivations of the president and the traitors could have been told much better. The traitors came off as unrealistic unbelievable villains. They also went 'missing' for long periods which was highly unlikely and felt off.

The plot also felt forced at times to allow the agents to gather what they needed when they needed it. Several 'twists' felt telegraphed and obvious. The book was too long and if the movements in the tunnels had been edited down significantly then the pace and intrigue could have been maintained as the story had great potential. Add in more character development and motivation and less unrealistic moments and this could easily have been a five star read. Many thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley UK for the ARC.

With President Kline’s life at risk after a breach on the White House, he and his wife are rushed to a rural nuclear bunker, Raven Rock, along with trusted agents and aides. It’s almost impossible to penetrate, but with insurrectionists amongst his personal aides and agents, it’s actually the worst move ever for the President. Here he is, sealed deep under a mountainside, where it quickly becomes clear that he’s in serious danger from an enemy within, not knowing who to trust, and it proves impossible to escape!

Secret Service Agent Erik Hill and his newly acquired partner Amber Cody have an impossible task deciding the bad guys from the good, and that makes for an exciting story when you’re deep under a mountainside, with no means of escape!

A really good storyline which would transfer perfectly to the big screen, but could have been shorter without the storyline suffering in any way.

Thanks first to Netgalley, the publisher and Matthew Quirk for the ARC copy of Inside Threat.

A pacey novel, with a lot of twists, and suspense throughout. I did waiver about 30% of the way through, as I was unsure on how it could continue, but pleased I progressed and finished the book.

Has the added thrill of being locked door style.