The cover of RULES OF WAR wonderfully and accurately sums up its mood. We see a soldier hanging from a helicopter rappel line in the middle of a group of tall buildings as smoke, ash, fire and debris appear from all corners. While it mirrors one scene in the book, the pages are full of them, as former marine Logan West leaps across a seemingly endless metaphorical ice floe in a pursuit fraught with constant danger.

Those who have read the previous novels in this series --- OVERWATCH, OATH OF HONOR and FIELD OF VALOR --- know what to expect, and no doubt will have a defibrillator on hand when they crack the binding. Betley wastes little time in setting up a few dominoes before getting Logan rolling. And roll he does. Things begin in earnest for Logan at Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Betley loves to drop him and all sorts of action into the world’s most interesting places. He does so once again in RULES OF WAR, which moves quickly from Nassau to Caracas, Venezuela. Logan is confined primarily to Caracas, but there is plenty of scenery to admire, at least briefly, as he pursues his mission, which is twofold, on behalf of the United States Joint Terrorism Task Force.

"Betley has walked the walk in some of the world’s most dangerous areas, and it is reflected in the talk he talks here.... The result is an exhilarating and passionate read that you won’t soon forget."

Logan must locate and recover the Vice President of the United States. The man is officially missing, but has been revealed to be a traitor aligned with the dangerous and deadly group known only as The Organization, which has been manipulating world events to play the superpowers against each other, thus sowing seeds of chaos and destruction. There are few better places to do this than Venezuela, and Logan, with the always deadly and quipping John Quick by his side, knows exactly how high the odds are stacked against him. Fortunately, he has the backing of some of the higher-ups of the Venezuelan government, at least one of whom has personal motivations to see that Logan is successful. These are motivations that he ultimately takes on as his own.

Logan and John also acquire a couple of unexpected allies along the way; common danger shared mutually makes for strange bedfellows. As a result, the explosions, collisions, firefighting and brutal hand-to-hand combat are never more than a page or two away at any given point, when it seems that even the joint skills of these two men will not be enough. Bet on them anyway.

Betley has walked the walk in some of the world’s most dangerous areas, and it is reflected in the talk he talks here. RULES OF WAR is shot through with his own experiences to the extent that one wonders at various points where the fiction ends and the reality begins. The result is an exhilarating and passionate read that you won’t soon forget.