The Border Guards by Mark Sinnett
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I find Mark Sinnett's thriller "The Border Guards" a below-average effort. FBI and other U.S. and Canadian agencies suspect massive smuggling via transports of trash coming from Canada to points of disposal in the States. The picturesque Thousand Islands area, parts of which belong to the Canadian province of Ontario, and the rest to the state of New York, has been a well-known and convenient avenue for smugglers of various kinds. In the post-2001 days, the U.S. government is understandably nervous about the possibility of nuclear material being transported for urban terrorism.

The FBI agents suspect that a Russian, Nikolai Petrovich, who has immigrated to Canada and become a powerful businessman, may be connected with the smuggling. There is also an interesting link to diamonds that disappear from Russian Arkangel mine. The plot is quite complex and features many characters, with some of them appearing to be innocent bystanders.

I definitely do not like the writing. It is choppy, many dialogues sound stilted and not natural. There not enough flow between sentences in paragraphs. It is almost like the author can not decide what he is writing about in a given paragraph. There is way too much redundant detail. The author works hard on trying to add some depth to the characters, but it only makes their motivations implausible and the text reads pretentious. The character of Adams Denver is a gross caricature.

If one skims the text by reading only every other sentence of every other paragraph, the book might be a good read.

Two stars.


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