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Hammerheads is one of the early-90s Dale Brown technothrillers, with a fictional militarized interdiction force called Hammerhead Squadron created by an act of Congress to intercept drug-smuggling aircraft along the southern border. The book is part procedural, part air-combat thriller, part political polemic.
Brown's strengths are the aircraft sequences and the tactical detail. The HH-60 helicopter and the V-22 Osprey both get extended set pieces that the form rewards. The political backdrop has not aged well; the Drug War framing the book takes for granted now reads as historical artifact.
Three stars. Recommended to readers who like the technothriller form and want to see what it looked like in a specific late-Cold-War, early-Drug-War moment. New readers should start with Flight of the Old Dog.
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