A book review of Sonic Ping by Orlando Stephenson

Sonic Ping by Orlando Stephenson
My Green Publisher, 2011, 262pp, $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-935897-43-9
Book review by Wayne C. Rogers

Sonic Ping is Orlando Stephenson’s first venture into the writing of thrillers and this is a thriller through and through, and not a detective story as one critic inadvertently called it. Also, don’t allow the weak cover to keep you from reading this very fast-paced story. I truly wish the publisher had spent a bit more money on the cover and had a scene on it from the novel that was both gripping and as enticing as the book is. This novel certainly deserves it.

Most of you are probably too young to remember when Clive Cussler wrote his first two published novels, Iceberg and The Mediterranean Caper back during the early seventies. This was before Raise the Titanic was written and Cussler was lifted up into realm of stardom. Well, Sonic Ping reminds me somewhat of those two earlier Cussler novels. Mr. Stephenson, like Clive Cussler, is an adventurer who travels around the world to legendary places that the rest of us only dream about. The author of Sonic Ping therefore writes about the places he has visited such as Casablanca and Marrakesh. This definitely gives the novel a truer sense of reality with fiction that’s mixed in.

Sonic Ping is the story of Daryl Morgan, a self-made millionaire, who gets caught up in an Internet scam when the widow (Maddy) of one of his best friends seeks him out for help. It seems her husband was involved in something secret and now people are calling her on the telephone with explicit threats, telling her that unless she gives them back the two million dollars he stole from them, bad things are going to happen and they do. Fast! The villains kidnap her niece, Jennifer, and threaten to sell her into slavery if the money isn’t returned ASAP. That’s when Daryl contacts his friend Rodger Truscott, who is an ex-Navy SEAL and a computer geek. Jennifer is quickly rescued, but from there everything else seems to go to hell as Maddy is kidnapped and sold into slavery in North Africa, sending Daryl and Rodger on a trip to Marrakesh to try and save her. This, however, is only the tip of the iceberg. It isn’t long before the two heroes find out that the world’s second largest Internet website is involved with billions of dollars at stake. Local cops and Federal Agents have been bought by the corporation, and Daryl and Rodger won’t know who to trust as they go on a hunt for the one person who just might have the answers to their questions—a woman named Judy, who has already been sold and is being kept as a prisoner in Tripoli.

Sonic Ping is a very addictive novel. You keep finding yourself being drawn back to it, hoping to discover the answers that both Daryl Morgan and Rodger Truscott are seeking. Like I said earlier, this novel is reminiscent of the earlier Cussler books in action and adventure. The reader also gets a crash course in Internet search engines and how the larger ones work. Needless to say, I found this book to be both fun and intriguing to read. Though you can tell this is a writer’s first major novel, the author still manages to make everything work while holding the reader’s interest and then tying up the loose ends at the finish.

I hope to see more novels with Daryl Morgan and Rodger Truscott in them in the near future. Here’s a small suggestion to the author. Don’t let Rodger steal all the thunder in the next book. It’s okay to have Daryl be the narrator and to carry the action to the bad guys with Rodger backing him up. There were a few times when I felt Rodger was hogging the show and Daryl was actually his right-hand man. Other than that, this novel is a winner.