Books'n'Bytes

The Review

Miamigrad

by Jerry Ahern

Miamigrad

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Miamigrad is Jerry and Sharon Ahern's 1989 standalone paramilitary thriller, written in the late-Cold-War paperback action tradition the Aherns helped define through their Survivalist series. The premise is a Soviet-backed Cuban paramilitary invasion of South Florida, the federal response that does not quite arrive in time, and a small Miami militia team that has to hold a neighborhood until the army can mobilize.

The Aherns write the hardware procedural with the precision their Survivalist readers expect (small-arms tactics, urban-combat logistics, the specific failure modes of late-1980s Soviet armor). The political framing is paperback-action minimal: there are good guys and there are bad guys, and the bad guys are the Soviets. The pacing is brisk and the set pieces (the Brickell Avenue street fighting, the Krome Avenue retreat) are effectively staged.

Recommended for fans of late-Cold-War paperback action thrillers (the Survivalist series, Bob Mayer's early work, Jerry Ahern's Track novels), and for readers looking for books like Miamigrad in the Soviet-invasion-of-America subgenre that briefly dominated the 1980s. Three stars and a representative artifact.

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