Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
I came to The Golden Shield of IBF after reading the early Survivalist novels and wondering what Jerry Ahern had been doing in the years after Jon Rourke aged out of the format. The answer is that he was writing books exactly like this one: a contemporary military-action novel co-credited with his wife Sharon, with a former intelligence operative at the center and a Nazi-gold artifact serving as the MacGuffin.
The Aherns' strengths have always been the tactical detail and the gun-and-gear porn that the genre rewards, and both are here in volume. The plot machinery is creaky in places. The opening Buenos Aires section is the strongest part of the book. The middle section, where the protagonists chase the artifact through a series of safe houses, sags.
Three stars. Recommended to readers who came up on the early Survivalist books and want to see Ahern in his late thriller register. Not the entry point for new readers.
Related reads
If you liked The Golden Shield of IBF
Miamigrad
by Jerry Ahern
Miamigrad by Jerry and Sharon Ahern 1989 review. A late-Cold-War paramilitary thriller about a Soviet invasion of Miami via Cuba, played for paperback action rather than political seriousness.
The Freeman
by Jerry Ahern
A standalone Ahern thriller. Survivalist pulp in a non-Rourke key. Exactly what its fans want.
A Clash of Kings
by George R. R. Martin
A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin 1998 review. Five claimants vie for the Iron Throne while a comet crosses the sky over Westeros. The middle volume of A Song of Ice and Fire and the one most committed Martin readers consider his peak.
A Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin
A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin 1996 review. The book that rewrote what epic fantasy was allowed to do. Westeros, the Iron Throne, the deaths nobody saw coming. Required reading.
American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
American Gods by Neil Gaiman 2001 review. An ex-convict named Shadow takes a job as bodyguard to a strange man named Wednesday and learns the old gods of immigration are still here, dying slow. The defining American urban fantasy of the 2000s.
Mistborn: The Final Empire
by Brandon Sanderson
Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson 2006 review. A street urchin named Vin discovers she can use magic by ingesting and burning metals, and a crew of thieves recruits her for the impossible: kill the immortal Lord Ruler.
More by this author