Book "Dead Energy" by James M.Corkill

About the Book: DEAD ENERGY IS AN EXCITING, FAST PACED ACTION ADVENTURE THAT WILL KEEP YOU TURNING THE PAGES!

Alex Cave is leisurely cruising his sailboat in Puget Sound when a hysterical voice on an oil tanker begs for help on the radio! He sees the behemoth ship through his binoculars an instant before it is engulfed in a brilliant flash of white light, and when he responds to the mayday and arrives before the coast Guard, he discovers the crew and 80,000 tons of crude oil have mysteriously vanished without a trace!

Alex Cave is just a geophysics teacher for a university in the town of Bozeman, Montana, USA, but he is also ex-CIA. The Director of National Security, Martin Donner, is his friend, and asks him to help the coast guard in solving what starts out as a small problem of stolen crude oil.

Initial thoughts are of a major oil leak, but none is found. When the bodies of the crew are found frozen to death on a mountain top one-hundred and fifty miles away, Alex realizes there is more going on than just stealing oil.

Things go from bad to worse as more tankers are attacked and their crews killed. The few witnesses all claim to see a bright light and a rainbow effect surrounding the tankers, but how did it happened? The Alaska pipeline and west coast refineries are suddenly empty! Transportation of basic necessities cannot reach the cities! Chaos reigns and common citizens turn to primal instincts to survive! Panic grips the nation as more oil disappears!

Alex teams up with the supervisor for the All Alaska oil Company in Valdez Alaska, a man affectionately known as Bull by his crew, and Christa Avery, a physicist working with oil samples from the Alaska pipeline. Together they try to discover why all the oil is disappearing, and the mastermind behind the theft and murders. The only clue the trio has is a strange crystal that was found in the hold of one of the empty oil tankers. Under closer inspection, it seems the crystal is alive.

Meanwhile, people in the northwestern states are trying to survive, which has now become the one rule. The AOS, Army of Survival, initially recruits people who wish to learn the skill of survival. Now that skill is becoming a fact of life, and the army starts keeping people against their wills, and training them to become soldiers. John Everex, the new leader, is a man on a mission. He rules without compassion and kills without Mercy. As one would expect, Everex and Alex’s paths cross, with dire consequences for one of them.

Harold Woolley is a meek man, with a demanding wife and two teen age children. He becomes caught up in the struggle to survive, and mistakenly ends up at the AOS camp. When his lack of courage threatens his family, he tries to become the brave man needed to get them out of their desperate situation, but after being a coward his entire life, he doesn’t think he can change.

Dead Energy has many different characters, and many different parts of the basic story, which all come together in the conclusion.

Each episode has one common thread tying each story into a series, but each episode is a new story, and can stand alone.

About the Author: "Hello. I would like to take you on exiting adventures here on our planet, with courageous people in dangerous situations, desperately trying to save humanity.

I'm a retired federal firefighter from Whidbey Island, Washington. Before that, I was an electronics technician and part time mechanical engineer at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. I was in the military, and served in Viet Nam. Being retired allows me to write full time and blend my knowledge with my imagination to create the adventures I would like to go on. When I was fourteen I moved to a small place called Orcas Island in Puget Sound; a community of around seven hundred people at that time. Fortunately for me, the famous horror writer, Hugh B. Cave, lived on one of the islands and became my mentor, though I don't write in that genre. The most important lesson he taught me was, only write what you know. Accurate details lend credibility and believability to the story. With that in mind, I do extensive research for my stories. Thanks for joining me on my adventures. It's not always easy finding good books to read. If you liked this one, please write a review on Amazon. Thanks! James M. Corkill. You can visit me at http://jamescorkill.com/.

My Review: This is a very entertaining story, very well written, that develops in a nice pace . When I was reading it, it reminded me the book "The Survivors" by Angela White in certain moments, mainly when the focus was on the army created after the chaos was in place. Also the NBC's TV-Series "Revolution" came to my mind, but this story is unique in a sense that the plot is directed to crude oil vanishing. Our hero is an ex-CIA agent named Alex Cave, that by coincidence witnesses the first case of crude oil disappearing from a tanker when he is sailing on his boat on close waters to the event. After reporting the incident, he is asked to investigate what is going on by his friend and Director of National Security, Martin Donner, and count on the help of Christa, a young physicist, and Bull, a supervisor at the All Alaska Oil Company. The story is full of very well developed characters, on a plot easy to follow and full of twists and keeps you cheering for your hero during the whole book. There are other parallel stories that are interlaced to the main plot in a very natural way, all converging to the apotheosis at the end. There are lots of brilliant sequences in action, some dose of romance and all the good ingredients that make this book a must read for all fiction lovers that want to spend some hours entertained. It took me around sixteen hours to read the whole book. I can cannot wait to read the next episode on Alex Cave adventures!

This book was written by James M.Corkill and I received an electronic version for reviewing. I was not requested to provide a positive review. Opinions expressed here are my own.

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