Great story, thrilling and heart pounding. Highly recommend to fans of this genre. Really great characters, and loved the historical era set in.

This was so bad.

The premise had merit. I loved the idea that we were going to get a story set at least in part, at the High Down Rocket Test Site in England. You get a lot more than that in the novel, but it was generally quite poor. First of all, the characters had about as much development as a cardboard cutout. I seriously could not tell the difference between any of the British men that orbit around Swan. The only difference between them were names and job titles. The dialog was also quite stilted. Do British people really go around calling each other "old chap" and the like? I also found it strange that measurements were given in feet and inches, while British spelling was used for certain words. The author also kept creating these back stories for very minor characters. Why? For the most part, these segments did nothing to further the story except to make the book longer. I also felt the author's grasp of the American space program to be tenuous at best. So many technical errors to recount here.

All in all, I read this because I wanted a story that talks about rocket testing in England. I did get that, though it seems some of the details of the site were changed to suit the author's purpose. I give this book 1.5 stars for trying.

“Countdown to Terror” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by David Holman. Mr. Holman has published two novels.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. The story is set in 1969 England. At the height of the cold war, England, the US and Russia are all actively pursuing space programs.

A former German, now working with the British space program is seen attacked and killed. This involves the prime character of the novel, former MI5 officer Alex Swan. Swan is now with the secretive Ministry of Defense Services Investigations Department. Swan, along with ex-detective colleague Arthur Gable, delves into the murder and soon finds themselves involved with a much larger issue.

There are more deaths and Swan soon discovers that there is a clandestine organization that evolved out of Nazi Germany actively at work trying to sabotage space efforts by the British, US and Russians. Swan works hard to identify those involved and stop them from bringing catastrophic results on the space efforts.

I enjoyed the nearly 9 hours I spent reading this 318 page espionage thriller. While there was only a little action, I enjoyed the intrigue and plot twists. Given that the plot involves the space programs the cover are is appropriate. I give this novel a 4.4 (rounded down to a 4) out of 5.

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