Of course the question remains; is the book any good? From the title of this review you can probably guess that the answer is yes, surprisingly so. Surprisingly because I have always been suspicious of 'co-authored' books, thinking that it many cases they're simply a way for a well known author to cash in on his name without actually doing much work; a bit like writing 'From the producers of' before a sub-standard film in an effort to make it seem better than it is so that people go to see it.

In the case of First Team however, my fear that this would be the case proved unfounded. I loved Larry Bond's previous books, especially Vortex, Cauldron & Red Pheonix, and have been disappointed that he is not a more prolific writer. With this new book he is not quite up to the standard of my favourite works of his, but its still better than a lot of modern thrillers dealing with the same subject.

This is due to several things. Firstly the style of the book. Its certainly fast paced, moving events on in almost real time and refusing to be bogged down in pointless detail or subplots. The single focus of the story is the Team's activities. It doesn't bother with cutting away to show what the bad guys are up to or with the character's private lives (beyond what is necessary to flesh them out and make them human). This is all about the mission and the more enjoyable for it.

The second positive is the level of detail and research that has Bond and DeFelice have obviously done. This feels real. The dynamics of how they conduct the operation have the ring of truth. You can imagine the Team working the way they do. There's no resorting to funky technology to get them out of scrapes or overly cinematic gun play. When at one point on of them fires an RPG at a car whilst standing too close he gets blown off his feet and smacks his head.

Which brings me to the third positive; these people make mistakes. They're not superhuman. Intelligence turns out to be incorrect, the get captured & they follow up duff leads. By making the Team falible it makes it far easier to suspend disbelief and get involved in the story. After all, how many times recently have we had terror warnings or police raids that have based on leads that have come to nothing? How many times have we 'surrounded' Al Quaeda suspects in Afghanistan just for them to slip away? Not everything can be resolved in a nice little neat package.

Of course the book has its flaws. I assume that this is the first in a series and it does have the feel of a story designed to establish the characters; a bit like a pilot episode. I haven't quite finished it yet but I suspect that some of the inter-personal issues between the team are likely to be resolved before the conclusion so that in the next book you can have a stable core of characters to move forward with. This leaves some of the plotting feeling a bit mechanical. Another complaint is that in some places it hovers on the edge of cliche. The lead field operative, for example, is portrayed as a rule-bending maverick working off instinct, his new boss as the up-tight, by the book woman and the researcher back at HQ as a talented uber-geek with a UFO fixation. It almost feels like the cast list of a TV show.

Still, these flaws aside Bond & Defelice have crafted an entertaining, fast paced, lean, contemporary thriller that is a welcome return for the man who's put his name to it. If you can get past the slight feeling that its been written with a formula in mind then there is much to enjoy. I can only hope that if a series is in the offing that they don't become lazy and let the standard slip.