The Colonel's Mistake (A Mark Sava Spy Novel)

Mark Sava, recently retired CIA station chief in Azerbaijan, is trying to live quietly with his girlfriend and teach college classes, but of course it's not to be. Within the first few pages Mark is trying to get his protege, Daria, out of prison, where she has been accused of a horrible crime. The entire CIA staff in Baku has been massacred, and the higher-ups in Washington DC are inept and seemingly unconcerned. The case quickly spins out of control. No one is who they appear to be. Friends can't be trusted and enemies are everywhere. Mark, despite his nondescript appearance, is no naive American, but a savvy street-fighter. That's all I'm going to tell you about the plot--it's complicated. The action ranges from Baku in Azerbaijan, to Washington, to Iran, to Iraq, to a village in France, to Dubai. Well, your head will be spinning.

And what was the colonel's mistake? The tragic mistake that has haunted him all his life? I won't tell you that either. Get the book.

Author Dan Mayland seems to know his way around the third world, and the dark outposts of human nature as well. His writing his crisp, lucid, and straightforward, without literary pretensions. The action starts immediately and doesn't let up until the last page. I really enjoyed this book, and finished it within two days, because I couldn't stop reading. This is to be first of a series of Mark Sava novels, and I'll be looking for the next one. Get this book as soon as you can. I recommend it highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber

Somebody is killing CIA agents in Baku and it is up to retired station chief Mark Sava to figure out why! When Baku last appeared on the world stage, Hitler's armies were making a mad dash to seize the oil fields. Times change, things stay the same and these days oil-rich Azerbaijan, the scene of Dan Wayland's [[ASIN:1612183352 The Colonel's Mistake]] is back on the front burner in a power play between the West, the Russians and the Chinese.

Grandma loves a good spy novel and particularly enjoyed Dan Wayland's fresh approach and change of scenery. Others have told you too much of the story already, so I won't ruin an excellent tale by adding to it. Great take-along read. Highly recommended.

I "borrowed" this book on my new Kindle Fire as the first such effort as part of my Amazon Prime membership. Unfortunately, although the Fire captured the book quite nicely, the story didn't capture me. The protagonist is introduced as someone who offers nothing that makes the reader want to find out more about him. He's an American former CIA official living in Azerbaijan. He dates a local woman and drinks beer on the beach, then sleeps with her on the balcony of his high-rise apartment. If we didn't know the name of the city right off the bat, it could be something that is happening in any city in the world, and happening to virtually anybody.
With a purchased book, I give it more time to grab me, as I must try to get something out of my investment. In this case, there was nothing there prompting me to hang onto it longer than necessary, not when there are so many other interesting novels out there. Memo to Mr. Mayland: in your next effort, make your "hook" more compelling.

A fast moving action novel with undeveloped paper thin characters. I cannot recommend it, unless you are trapped in an airport and there is nothing else to read.

Dan Mayland has written a great novel filled with plot twists and turns. "The Colonel's Mistake" takes us on a journey involving national and global politics and espionage that includes places such as Iran, France, and Dubai. The story is gripping and keeps you turning pages wanting to see what happens next. You find yourself pulling for the main character, Mark Rava, as he struggles to stay alive through as the plot unfolds.

I am very impressed with Dan Mayland's ability to tell a good story. He keeps it very interesting by weaving in vivid descriptions of the countryside and cities that Mark visits on his adventure.

If you are a fan of spy adventures with lots of plot twists - then The Colonel's Mistake will not disappoint you.

Novels, including spy thrillers, are rarely regarded as self-instructional tools, but I learned a lot from reading Dan Mayland's book The Colonel's Mistake. I had heard of Azerbaijan before, but I had no idea that folks there spoke Azeri. Initially, I thought Azerbaijan was an odd location for a book of this kind, but now I know that it has a substantial amount of oil, that it borders Russia, Iran, and the Caspian Sea, and is sometimes referred to as the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Given its strategically crucial location, what better place to set a novel intended to raise spy-versus-spy goose bumps?

Before the fall of the iron curtain, Azerbaijan was dominated by the Soviet Union. I found it really interesting to read about the remnants of the Soviet Empire -- poorly built, unattractive old buildings; automobiles that were ugly and inefficient even when brand new; hulking, rusty derricks, some still pumping oil, but most long since out of commission. Everything the Soviet Union did in Azerbaijan seems to have been on the cheap and without any aesthetic sensibility.

The contrast between remnants of the Soviet presence in Central Asia and the oil rich United Arab Emirates (UAE), another exotic place where some of Mayland's novel plays out, is startling. Given the vast scale of everything being built in the UAE city of Dubai, one wonders if money and taste are just as incompatible as Soviet style communism and taste. Yes, in the modern section of Dubai everything is new, polished, and huge, but maybe this is best translated as garish, trying too hard to conspicuously display this small nation's enormous wealth.

There are, indeed, things to be learned from reading The Colonel's Mistake. Also, since the book is presented as the first in a series with ex-CIA operative Mark Sava as protagonist, we have something to look forward to. After all, Sava's character is underdeveloped in this novel, so we can hope to understand him better in Mayland's subsequent offerings.

While The Colonel's Mistake has merit, the quality of the tale told in this first volume of he Mark Sava series is located somewhere between workmanlike and perfunctory. Clearly, the author has done some homework, thus all the things we learn about seldom-heard-of foreign locations and their inhabitants. However, for a novel intended to be a spy thriller, this one is pretty dull. It has its moments, to be sure, but it is uneven and episodic, maybe even disjointed. Perhaps this is inevitable in a 323 page book with 81 chapters and an epilogue, so why do it this way? It may be an ambitious experiment in the organization of prose ficton, but it doesn't work.

There is a slew of more or less promising characters, but none of them are particularly likeable. No, most aren't innately cruel, duplicitous, or otherwise evil, but they lack depth. Maybe that's just another way of saying they're not well developed, so they wind up seeming one-dimensional. Only Colonel D'Amato, the soldier-bureaucrat whose biography gives the novel its name, is eventually presented with the sort of complexity that makes him really interesting.

As for Mayland's prose style, it's OK but sort of plodding, nothing to get caught up in or excited about. In fact, maybe "it's OK" is a good summary evaluation of the entire book. It's a first novel and it reads like one. I think, however, that subsequent volumes of the Mark Sava series will get progressively better as the author becomes more adept at using his knowledge of remote, exotic, and forbidding places and threatening events in constructing coherent narratives that keep readers on the edges of our seats.

Thomas & Mercer keeps turning out great authors in the espionage and international adventures and The colonel's Mistake is no exception. The main character is a former CIA operative living a broad enjoying the slow pace of teaching part time and the other enjoying the female companionship in Baku, Azerbaijan. Sava is rousted out of bed to be haul down to the local infamous prison where most do not come out a live. Why now? Why him? Because an Iranian American female agent being held there whispered his name? Could this be the beginning to draw him out of early retirement? Who is pulling the strings? Author Maryland writing is interesting and leads the reader into the plot like Ian Fleming writing of the past spy novels. Look forward to more of the author's titles.

Thomas & Mercer keeps turning out great authors in the espionage and international adventures and The colonel's Mistake is no exception. The main character is a former CIA operative living a broad enjoying the slow pace of teaching part time and the other enjoying the female companionship in Baku, Azerbaijan. Sava is rousted out of bed to be haul down to the local infamous prison where most do not come out a live. Why now? Why him? Because an Iranian American female agent being held there whispered his name? Could this be the beginning to draw him out of early retirement? Who is pulling the strings? Author Maryland writing is interesting and leads the reader into the plot like Ian Fleming writing of the past spy novels. Look forward to more of the author's titles.

There a number of things I liked about THE COLONEL'S MISTAKE, the first of a series about ex-CIA agent Mark Sava. First it's not attempting to be a James Bond clone-wannabe. So many new spy series just seem to try to copy the Ian Fleming template. Second, it's a straight forward tale of intrigue and espionage written in a way to keep you guessing throughout. Third, the characters are interesting and very well developed. I read this book in one sitting and look forward to the next installment.

Mark Sava is a retired CIA agent and section leader living in Baku, Azerbaijan which is sandwiched between Russia to the north and Iran to the south. Living off his retirement he's become a teacher at a local college and takes pleasure in not being involved with CIA activities. But when an American Diplomat is assassinated in Baku, the local CIA agents massacred, and one of his former subordinates arrested he is thrown back into the world of espionage to save himself and those around him. With the help of ex-navy seal John Decker he starts to unravel the mystery behind the violence by first springing his subordinate, Daria Buckingham, from prison but then finding out he may not be able to trust her. As events unfold the story takes the reader on a wild ride of violence and intrigue as Sava bounces around the Middle East in an attempt to stop a possible nuclear attack by Iranian extremists only to discover there is more than meets the eye on who is actually behind the attacks.

In Sava we see a person highly trained as a field agent but who is not impervious to the violence around him. His only hope of survival is to stay one step ahead of his enemies. The author takes his time to develop each main character so that the reader understands what motivates them into the actions they take. To me the best thing about the story is the author does not fill it with a bunch of gadgets to help the characters. The book is basically an old-fashion blood-and-guts spy story written in a way to keep the reader on the edge of his seat. To say I enjoyed this is an understatement.

I would recommend this to any person who enjoys a strong spy yarn, filled with intrigue and violence. You certainly will not be disappointed

Though I prefer reading non-fiction books, this spy novel reads pretty well. It is the first in a series about a retired CIA officer, Mark Sava, who is teaching when he becomes caught up in the intrigue of a complicated plot involving the US, Iran and Azerbaijan. The main reason I was drawn to this novel is because Iran is in current day's focus, plus the US has a history of complicated undercover stuff with Iran dating back to the Arms for Hostages stuff during the Reagan Administration. So, the novel, though fictitious, seems somewhat believable, plus gives a reader thought-provoking ideas about what might take place, sort of, in the region, if not already underway. Even, independent of current events, the story held my interest and moved along pretty fast.