The only thing more dangerous than fake news is fake truth in this exhilarating thriller by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Goldberg.Author Ian Ludlow writes great adventures…but after helping Chinese movie star Wang Mei defect to the United States, he becomes the accidental hero of a real-life espionage thriller. Now he’s stuck with the actress—and suffering a nasty case of writer’s … nasty case of writer’s block—when he stumbles into a secret Russian plot using “fake news” to outrage Americans into believing a terrifying lie.
It’s up to Ian and Margo French, his researcher-turned-spy, to discover the connection between a barbaric drug lord in Mexico, a homicidal maniac in California, a rogue citizen army in Texas, a raging TV pundit in New York, and two dead tourists in Portugal…before the president of the United States makes a catastrophic mistake that could resurrect the Soviet Union.
The only weapon Ian has against the global conspiracy, and the assassins who are closing in on him, is his vivid imagination. If his story isn’t a killer thriller, he’s dead.
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Loved it! These characters are so wonderfully developed and have such great lines. Even when you know it’s a cheesy line or scene on purpose, it makes you laugh out loud. I really hope there is going to be a lot more Ian Ludlow and friends in the future!
“Fake Truth” by Lee Goldberg is part of the Ian Ludlow series, but new readers easily catch through numerous explanations within the context of the current narrative. Each chapter identifies date, location, and time so characters, action, and complications are easily tracked. The story has multiple geographic settings, and all are sources of crime, espionage, political intrigue, and general nastiness, enough to make one want to wear a baseball cap covered with aluminum foil. The story is told from all points of view so readers see the conspiracy, the plans, and the deception of all participants.
This is the tale of the real becoming fiction and fiction becoming real. The story unfolds in a casual conversation driven narrative. There are two separate story lines; on one hand, “The Kitchen” a terrorist group, plans to manipulate the American people by creating fake news using social media and TV to advance their agenda. On the other hand, Ian Ludlow, film, TV, and novel writer, is out of ideas for the next book in his thriller series. He seeks plot inspiration by investigating the accidental deaths of two American tourists. These two stories become intertwined with disastrous results.
The settings and descriptions paint a colorful, vivid picture for readers. “The stone buildings, none taller than four stories, were packed so tightly together that they formed an unbroken wall of rusting wrought iron.”
“Fake Truth” is filled with bad guys who have bad behavior. Truth becomes fiction, and fiction becomes fact. After all, no one tells the truth on television. I received a review copy of “Fake Truth” from Lee Goldberg, and Thomas & Mercer. It was quick to read and quite entertaining. It was filled with unusual twists and turns as the deception unravels.
The pen is mightier than the sword and the imagination is a powerful thing as Author Ian Ludlow and Margo French, his researcher-turned-spy prove in Fake Truth the latest in the Ian Ludlow Thrillers by Lee Goldberg. This is high energy, clever and tons of fun. I really enjoyed this fast paced, witty romp taken straight from today’s headlines and anxiously await Ian and Margo’s next adventure.
Writer Ian Ludlow is stuck. Despite his most recent exploits as an off the books CIA agent, he can’t come up with anything worthy of his next book. So when his CIA partner, Margo French, throws a newspaper at him, he picks a couple of articles at random and they begin to investigate as if Ian’s writer’s imagination was right and there is a connection between them. The scary thing is, they might have stumbled upon something that way, with tentacles that spread from Russia to the US-Mexico border with the news media in between. But what exactly have they found?
I’ve enjoyed the first two books in this series, but this one was a disappointment. While we see the various threads involved in this plot early on, the story still moves too slowly for the first half. Once it does start, we get plenty of action and a great climax. Since this is a loving spoof of the spy genre, I definitely enjoyed some laughs. The characters can be a bit thin, but that’s part of the genre. Unfortunately, so is sex, and there are several sex scenes I really could have done without. The author stages his story in such a way that very thinly disguises his politics, which really pulled me out of the story. I pick up fiction to escape politics, not to have one point of view shoved down my throat. I realize both of the things that bothered me might be selling points to others, but to me, they kept me from fully enjoying the book. I enjoyed the first two books in this series (and the books should be read in order since this one has some spoilers for previous adventures), so hopefully the series will be back to entertaining for the next in the series.
Easy fantasy read.