MWSA Review

Only one minute into the read of Shadow Sanction by Steve Stratton, I was on the edge of my seat. Lance Bear Wolf and his wife, Elle Parker, travel to the Crow Indian Reservation for the funeral of a friend, and discover an active drug problem. They are brazenly followed onto the reservation and attacked by bad guys from the Sinaloa Cartel, intent on eliminating them both. Wolf’s number one priority is the safety of his people from cartel activity. That is, until the President of the United States orders Wolf and his organization, Shadow Tier, to drop everything to stop the Taliban’s opium trade, or risk losing his black ops funding.

Wolf and his extraordinary Shadow Tier operators must stop the re-emergence of The French Connection and its terror funding connection to the Taliban. With infiltration operations on three continents, including the cartel, Wolf’s squadrons track various opium connections, putting together an intertwined network of drug trafficking that all need to be busted.

Shadow Sanction is a complex story that is surprisingly easy to follow, despite a wide array of characters and locations. Steve Stratton is a masterful storyteller, and I can’t wait to read his next installment.

Review by Nancy Panko (February 2024)

 

Author's Synopsis

Lance Bear Wolf and his Shadow Tier operators must stop the rebirth of The French Connection and its terror funding connection to the Taliban. By any means necessary.

When the resurgent Sinaloa cartel attacks Wolf and his wife, Elle Parker, on the Crow Indian reservation, the safety of his people becomes Job One—until the president of the United States orders Shadow Tier to stop the Taliban’s opium trade. The president’s underlying message: The drug war is a failure. Fix this now, or your black funding disappears.

Torn between saving his people and the president’s demands for direct action, Wolf sends Shadow Tier’s Bravo Squadron to Afghanistan to infiltrate the Taliban drug organization. He sends Kieran Kennedy, his executive officer, to stand up and train a new international Charlie Squadron in the U.K. While Wolf bends the rules to protect the reservation on the home front, the squadrons track opium with a mysterious United Nations connection out of Afghanistan to a new “French Connection” in Marseilles, France.

The teams identify a likely distribution hub and its leadership. But going deeper will take initiative and innovation. Kennedy takes the dangerous decision to operate in the open … as a drug cartel. The operation yields results, but there is a piece missing. Parker and Kennedy believe a government contractor providing logistics flights into and out of the war zones is involved.

Plans are made by the fake cartel for a large shipment of heroin to go to the mafia in New York City, where wholesale arrests will be made if all goes as planned. As the data pours in from three continents, the heroin network unfolds and things to do not go as planned. The takedown of a multi-national drug production, shipment, and sales operation is unlike any operation Shadow Tier has attempted.

For the president, it’s a no-fail mission or his administration is doomed.

For Shadow Tier, it’s time to bring the war back into “the war on drugs.”

Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle

Review Genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller

Number of Pages: 452

Word Count: 109000