Sparkles and Karim by Dave Moores, reviewed by Michael Joll

(Sparkles and Karim by Dave Moores, 261 pages MiddleroadPublishers. Available from Amazon here.) 

Buckle up!

Iraq, 2014. Outside the wire, there are three types of people: bag guys, worse guys and victims, doing whatever it takes to survive in a country dominated by ISIS, the dregs of the Muslim world.

It’s a time and a place where you can trust no one unless you have a death wish, where money can buy you a “Get out of jail free” card, but only for so long.

Repeat: Trust no one. If you can buy someone, so can others with a different, competing agenda. Loyalty comes with common blood ahead of everything, but don’t count on it.

Now inject USAF Major Michelle “Sparkles” Wilson and Iraq-born, California-raised Karim Hamid into this human-made cesspool of corruption, betrayal and hatred. Faced with a dishonourable discharge for disobeying orders, a court martial and a jail sentence in an armed forces prison for women, Sparkles chooses to accept a near-impossible CIA mission deep inside Iraq as the lesser of two evils. Her chances of success, which will include her survival? Not good.

Regular army soldier Karim Hamid, recruited by the CIA to penetrate ISIS in Iraq, has a different motive – to rescue Miriam, the girl he left behind as a child in ISIS-controlled Mosul. He, too, feels pressured into accepting the CIA assignment as his best chance of finding her.

Competing agendas and incompatible motives, to say nothing of diametrically opposite personalities, do not make for a cohesive team. Karim’s an immature, impulsive daredevil; Sparkles is a controlling, by-the-book perfectionist. Matches and gasoline somehow have to get along without killing each other.

Text to Karim: Earn my trust, hotshot.

Text to Sparkles: Stop acting like you own the show.

Ahead of them is the imperative to find a stolen consignment of radioactive cesium sufficient to make a dirty bomb that could change the outcome of the ISIS-fuelled insurrection. The CIA wants it.

Author Dave Moores

The man who stole it intends to sell it to buy his way out of Iraq. ISIS wants in on the Weapons of Mass Destruction business. And no one in Washington will want to admit they were careless in relinquishing control of the material or complicity in the implementation or threat of the use of a dirty bomb against the civilian population of their ally.

Behind them is a financially troubled Texas oil company looking to make a killing on energy futures. A dirty bomb exploding in Iraq’s biggest oilfield, rendering it uninhabitable for years, will do just that.

Running parallel is the CIA duo with their own interests and the Pentagon with theirs.

Sparkes and Karim takes the reader on a wild ride through Iraq, mainly in Toyota Hiluxes, the mode of transport favoured by ISIS. Arabic-speaking, Quran-quoting, nominally Christian Karim has spent months inside ISIS and passes himself off easily (sometimes with the help of some serious graft) as an ISIS fighter.

To form a team, if less than a partnership, to survive and give the mission any chance of succeeding, broomstick-up-her-ass, Air Force issue, Sparkles swallows her pride and masquerades as his wife.

Moores’ strength is his ability to bring the reader along with Sparkles and Karim on their stomach-turning rollercoaster ride through atrocities and the ever-present threat of capture, torture, and death. He places the reader firmly behind the wheel of the Hilux as Sparkles and Karnm dodge gunfire, strafing, and bombing.

His vivid descriptions of the towns, cities, and countryside inject life into what would be mere backdrops in the hands of a less gifted writer. His minor characters, never intrusive but always convincing, bring a sense of ever-present menace to the narrative.

The story unfolds over about a week, so there is little time for character development or epiphanies on the road to Damascus. Instead, Moores offers plot twists, hairpin bends, box canyons, and serious, bloody mayhem. Prepare to be blindsided by the unexpected and have your senses assaulted by the visceral cruelty and depravity of what passed for life in Iraq under ISIS in 2014.

Sparkles and Karim provides a terrific and often terrifying read.  

Those of a nervous disposition might prefer Jane Austen. 

***

Sparkles and Karim by Dave Moores is available at Amazon here.

Michael Joll is a novelist and short story writer with four published novels and two collections of short stories to his credit. His latest novel is “Hacker.” He lives in Brampton with his wife of nearly fifty-five years and an elderly springer spaniel, a retired member of the Toronto Police bomb squad.

Note: Quick Brown Fox welcomes your reviews and your pieces about reading and writing, the writing life, and other literary-themed pieces. See other book reviews here (and scroll down) and pieces about writing here (and scroll down).

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.  

Sparkles and Karim ~ a new novel by Dave Moores

Hi, Brian.

My novel Sparkles and Karim was published this week and is available on Amazon. My sincere thanks to you and all folks in the Thursday afternoon “Extreme” class who definitely helped sandpaper off the rough edges, and enabled me to realize every writer’s dream of actually getting published!

Dave

Sparkles and Karim

Iraq, 2014. ISIS is on a roll and Sparkles and Karim need to find a dangerous cache of radioactive material before it's used to make some western city glow.

Major Michelle Wilson, age 32, callsign Sparkles, a US fighter pilot, and Karim Hamid, age 21, callsign Black Flag, a US soldier of Iraqi descent, raised in the US and planted inside ISIS by the CIA have both committed serious infractions, breaking away from their assigned duties, albeit for reasons readers will applaud. 

To atone for their dereliction, they find themselves forced to team up on a perilous mission from Baghdad to Mosul – a city already taken by ISIS – posing as an ISIS couple.

He’s an impulsive risk-taker with little sense of fear, she’s a driven, uptight perfectionist. They’re sceptical of each other initially, but as they face betrayal and the barbarity of jihad, they learn to value each other and become a team in ways they had never imagined.

Dave Moores 

Raised in Bristol, UK, Dave now lives in Oakville, Ontario. Dave’s first novel, Windward Legs, was set in the sailing milieu of Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe. His second novel, Attitude, was a young adult crime fiction novel. But although wildly disparate in content, all of Dave’s novels share the same page-turning intensity.

Sparkles and Karim is available from Amazon here.

Note: If you’re interested in getting published, come to our in-person “How to Get Published” workshop on May 11 in Niagara on the Lake (details here).

See all my upcoming  weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and four-day retreats here. ~Brian

See more new books by your fellow authors – and invites to their book launches – here (and scroll down).

“Planes,” a memoir by Dave Moores

 

When the rubber motor goes splat and shreds the fuselage to muffled sniggers from your mates, you know you’ve overdone it. Hang on, you say, who ever heard of a motor made of rubber, and what’s a fuselage, hello?

Let’s back up. The Downs in Bristol, England, the town where I grew up, is a wide grassy expanse, bordered on three sides by elegant Victorian residences. The southern boundary overlooks the cliffs of the Avon Gorge which is spanned by the landmark Clifton Suspension Bridge. An avenue called Ladies’ mile crosses the Downs and the ladies of Clifton rode horseback there in the Jane Austen era. I picture Emma Woodhouse or Elizabeth Bennett side-saddle on docile chestnut mares. A century later, “Ladies Mile” had a less genteel connotation. Ladies of the night plied their trade there in the depression times, but we’re getting off-track here.

The Downs remains an unparalleled blessing to the city.  People fly kites, go for a run, dogs chase around, and soccer is played during the winter season. In my youth, schoolboys and adults alike gathered on Sunday mornings to fly model planes.

Most of these balsa wood and tissue creations had a propeller upfront, driven by what is best described as the mother of all rubber bands hooked to a peg at the rear end of the fuselage, hence the term “rubber motor”. You wound it up by turning the prop with your finger, or if you were into this stuff big time, you’d wind the motor with a hand drill. Overwind and it would go splat with strands of brown rubber and bits of your plane flying everywhere.

An interest in things that flew came, I reckon, from my Dad. An artist at heart, he’d served as an engineering draftsman in the Royal Air Force during World War 2. A memory that has stayed with me is cycling with Dad up the Gloucester Road in  Bristol to Filton Aerodrome, north of the city, to witness the first flight of what was then the largest aircraft ever built, the Bristol Brabazon.

This monster was intended as a luxury transatlantic airliner. The magnitude of the occasion gripped me. The deep drone of the plane’s eight engines shook the air, and me as well, as the Brabazon accelerated down the specially-built runway. Would it fly? Could something that huge take to the air? It could and did, to cheers and sighs of relief, a moment I never forgot. I was seven years old.

Here’s another of those moments. Following my stint at university, my teenage sweetheart and I married and my first job turned out to be with British Aerospace, right back there at Filton where “the Brab” as Bristolians named it, had left its mark on my  juvenile mind years before.

In a gigantic assembly building down a slope from the office where I worked as a trainee project planner, the prototype Concorde supersonic airliner was taking shape to the stutter of rivet guns. On lunch breaks, along with Brian and Sid, a couple of co-workers, I’d wander down the hill to take a look. 

The year was 1969, the moonshot was in final preparation and this felt like Britain’s aerospace equivalent, pushing boundaries in the same electrifying way. Came the big day.  Everybody was invited to leave their desks and watch the maiden flight. The Concorde, moving gingerly like a slender white bird, stalked to the end of the runway and made a careful turn. Minutes passed, the spectators grew restless, was something amiss?

The rising whine of turbines silenced our speculations. The Concorde rolled forward and gathered speed. I swear nobody breathed. With a rumble of crackling thunder, it raised its nose and took to the air, orange flames winking in the four jet pipes, a moment to remember.

Back to The Downs, more modest dreams of flight, and rubber motors. “The Model Airport”, a shop downtown, sold model airplane kits. A couple of weeks’ pocket money would buy one. It contained plans, balsa wood sticks and balsa sheets on which were printed the shapes of wing ribs, bulkheads and such, which you’d have to cut out with a very sharp, pointy knife. It was a good idea to have bandages handy for this step.

The plans got unfolded and laid on a board so that wings, fuselage sides and other parts could be constructed by pinning spars, ribs and frames over the plans and sticking them together with heady-smelling balsa glue. Once assembled, the frames got covered with model plane tissue, painted with cellulose dope, and the model was ready to have its motor and propellor installed and be carted off to The Downs in hopes it would fly.

Rubber motor wound, you’d stand for a couple of seconds facing into the wind, getting up your nerve, then release the propellor which made a fluttery sound like a flock of birds as your plane climbed away to face the elements. No radio-control of course, you hoped you’d trimmed it to climb and circle. Some models did and some didn’t. You pretty quickly learned basic aerodynamics, fine-tuning the thrust line, centre-of-gravity, wing and tailplane angles-of-incidence and more besides. Failure to do so resulted in unfortunate contact with the ground.

We made gliders as well, towed into the air like a kite and then released. One of mine caught a thermal and flew away for good.  Jetex engines arrived at The Model Airport, little rocket motors burning solid fuel-pellets. They made an awful-smelling exhaust that came out with a hiss like an angry snake. A fifteen-second engine-run would send a small model whizzing about doing loops close to the ground so people’d have to duck.

There was something about model planes that took hold of us as kids, and as young men too. Soon, we’d be designing our own, no more kits. It became a friendly competition to see who could produce the coolest flying machine on The Downs next Sunday. Watching your model climb into the air for the first time and circle above, in the knowledge that you’d constructed this with the care and skill of your own hands and brain, felt special. Perhaps, in some small way, special like those first flights at Filton Aerodrome. Is that a stretch? Maybe, maybe not.

***

Dave Moores has a couple of novels out there, Attitude (YA) and Windward Legs (commercial fiction) published on Amazon in the last couple of years by Middleroad Publishers of Toronto. Several of his short pieces have appeared in the online journal CommuterLit. He's a strong believer in one of Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules for Writers: If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. He enjoys playing with language but will jump through hoops to avoid prolixity. Dave is retired from a career in information technology and lives in Oakville, Ontario.

 See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

“So Much Snow”

Translated from the German, “Der Viele, Viele Schnee” by Wolfgang Borchert (1921-1947) by Dave Moores.

Snow hung in the branches. The machine-gunner stood in a Russian forest at a guard post near the frontline singing Christmas carols. It was actually February, but who cared; the snow lay meters deep. Snow between black trees. Snow on black-blue branches. Snow stuck to twigs, clinging to limbs, blown like cotton wool on bushes and frozen on black tree trunks. So much snow. And the machine-gunner sang Christmas carols although it was February.

Now and then you have to loose off a couple of shots or the gun freezes up. Just shoot straight ahead into the dark. That way it doesn’t freeze. Or shoot the bushes. Sure, go ahead, you can be pretty certain nobody’s hiding in there. It calms your nerves to loose off a volley every quarter hour. Otherwise, the gun freezes up. And it’s not so darn quiet when you take a shot once in a while.

That’s what they’d told him when he came on duty. “And something else, keep your earmuffs off your ears. Orders from the Regiment. On post you’ve got to keep your earmuffs off your ears. Otherwise, you’ll hear nothing. Orders are orders but you’ll hear nothing anyway, everything is still. No Ivans. For weeks now, no Ivans. So there you go, shoot now and then. Calm your nerves.” That’s what they told him.

Wolfgang Borchert 

Now he stood alone. He pulled the earmuffs off his ears and the cold pinched them with sharp fingers. Alone. And snow hung in the branches. Stuck to black-blue boughs. Heaped on bushes. Blown into hollows. So much snow. And the snow he stood in made the danger feel unreal. Made it seem so far off. Yet it could be right there behind you. Hidden. And the snow he stood in, alone in the night, alone for the first time, made the threat of the enemy seem remote. Made everything so quiet that the blood pumped loud in his ears, so loud he couldn’t ignore it. And the snow was silent.

From his left came a sound like a whisper. Now in front. Then to the right. Left again. And suddenly behind. The machine-gunner held his breath. There it was again, something whispering. The rush of blood in his ears got really loud. He tore open his coat collar, his fingers tugging, trembling. They tore open the collar so his ears weren’t covered.

There came the whispering again. Sweat ran cold from under his helmet and froze on his forehead. Froze there. It was minus forty-two degrees. Something whispered. Behind. And to the right. Straight ahead, now here. Now over there again. The machine-gunner stood in the Russian forest. Snow hung in the branches. And the blood pumped loud in his ears, sweat froze on his forehead and trickled from under his helmet.

Again, the whispering. Could be anything, anyone. The snow muffled it. Sweat froze on his forehead. Fear was loud in his ears. Because something whispered. So he sang. Sang loudly so that he wouldn’t hear the fear anymore and the whispering anymore, and so that the sweat wouldn’t freeze anymore. He sang, and felt the fear depart. He sang Christmas carols and heard no more whispers. He sang Christmas carols loud in the Russian forest. Because snow hung in the black-blue branches. So much snow.

Suddenly a twig cracked. Speechless, the machine-gunner spun around and pulled out his pistol. Here came the Sergeant, big strides pushing through the snow. Now I’m going to be shot, the machine-gunner thought. I sang on duty and now I’ll be shot. Here comes the Sergeant, and look at him run. I sang on duty and now he’s coming to shoot me. And he gripped his pistol tight in his hand.

Then the Sergeant was there. And hugged him. And looked around. And then gasped, “My God, hold me tight, Man. My God! My God!” Then he laughed and waved his hands, and laughed some more. “Christmas carols already! Aren’t we in February? We certainly are in February. Carols in this damned Russian forest? Carols? It’s this godawful silence. Christmas carols, my God again. Just hold me tight. Be quiet. There! That’s enough. Don’t laugh,” and still breathless, “Don’t laugh, you. It’s the silence, weeks long, this silence. No Ivans, nothing. And then you hear Christmas carols, yet here we are in February. But it’s the snow. There is so much of it. Don’t laugh, you. It makes us crazy, I tell you. You’ve only been here a few days but we’ve been stuck here for weeks and no Ivans, nothing. It makes you crazy, always everything still. No Ivans for weeks. Then you hear Christmas carols. Don’t laugh. But when I saw you, right then they stopped. My God, it makes you crazy, this never-ending silence.” 

The Sergeant was still breathing hard. Then he laughed and hugged him tight. And the machine gunner hugged him back. They both laughed. In the Russian forest, in February. Every so often a branch would bend under its burden of snow, and the snow slid to the ground between the blue-black boughs. And it made a sound like a whisper. Ahead at first, now on the left. Then here. So quiet. There too. Whispers everywhere. Because snow hung in the branches. So much snow.

***

Dave Moores is a retired IT exec living in Oakville. He’s been a regular at Brian’s writing classes for a while now, and during that time has two novels published by Middleroad Publishers of Toronto. The first, Windward Legs, is commercial fiction, set in the sailing milieu of Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe Region. The second, Attitude, a Young Adult story, unfolds in wintertime in small-town in Huron County. 

Dave wants everyone to know how much he owes Brian and his classmates for helping him write stories that actually meet the high bar of the publishing industry.

Wolfgang Borchert (1921-1947) was a soldier in the German Army during World War II and became a noted author and playwright before his early death due to war wounds and subsequent imprisonment for his opposition to the Nazi regime. His works are uncompromising on the issues of humanity and humanism and they continue to be studied in German Schools.

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

A new book: Windward Legs by Dave Moores

Windward Legs, a novel by Dave Moores

Fast and risky action, both on and off the water, is what keeps Alice going. Sailing and men have become her prime distractions after a bad marriage breakup. The sailing is going well, the other, not so much.

Graphic and laced with dry humour, Windward Legs is the story of Alice’s exploits and her struggles, hair-raising at times, to get her life back on an even keel. She is aided, and often impeded, by a lively cast of characters from the worlds of competitive sailing, hi-tech start-ups and corporate finance, among them the all-female crew of the racing yacht Class Action, octogenarian billionaire entrepreneur Martin Opitz, and her rough-around-the-edges friend Fran.

There’s fun, mortal danger and human drama in Windward Legs, a surprising and captivating story told from a unique insider’s viewpoint.

From Middleroad Publishers, available on Amazon here.

David Moores started writing fiction “to see if I could” following a decision to finally retire from the workforce. Writing in turn started becoming a full-time job. Dave’s previous novel, Attitude, was also published by Middleroad. See more here. 

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly classes, weekend writing retreats, and one-day workshops here.

“Touch and Go” by David Moores

The grassy pathway before me descended into an empty valley. Pretty summer clouds graced the sky, the day was bright, and the air carried the scent of fresh-cut hay. I had no notion of my purpose here and strangely this did not concern me.

An odd little man appeared at my side. His face displayed the lines and papery pallor of advanced age. He was formally clad in black, a cloth jacket over a white shirt and black tie. On his head,  a bowler hat. He carried a walking cane and wore unexpected black shorts. The ensemble was completed by dress shoes and socks, black as well: hardly appropriate for a ramble in the countryside. When he spoke his voice was surprisingly clear, the accent and diction refined. “Come along, we have to get below right away.” He beckoned to me and set off down the path with a nimble gait. I felt compelled to follow.

A single-track railway line came into view. Strange again, that I had not observed it sooner. My guide pressed on and our  path turned left beside the track. Around a bend we came upon a small structure having the appearance of a shed. I recognized it as what used to be called "a halt," not exactly a station but a place where a local train might pause for passengers to alight or embark. We drew near and climbed weathered wooden steps to a sheltered platform.

The man consulted a timetable displayed in a glass-fronted case. He checked a pocket-watch and gave a satisfied nod. “You won’t have to wait long. Five minutes, it’s always on time.” 

For reasons I can’t explain, I still felt no curiosity, merely a sense of anticipation. I have always enjoyed train-rides. We seated ourselves on a bench. 

The hoot of a train-whistle was followed by followed by the rumble of wheels. A small steam locomotive puffed into sight pulling a couple of carriages. The image recalled childhood day trips to the seaside with my parents. The train pulled in with a hiss of steam and gentle grinding of brakes.

We got to our feet. The man reached for a door handle. “Farewell, the train will take you where you need to go.” He handed me a business card which I pocketed as I boarded. There were no other passengers.

As the train moved off, a nagging sense of unmet obligations replaced anticipation. Had I failed to make a payment, or missed a crucial appointment? I searched my memory in vain.

Miles went by and the day darkened. Landscape passing the windows turned to wild moorland and sombre woods. My unease deepened to fear, but fear of what, I still had no idea. Who was this person who’d put me here, anyway? I reached into my pocket and withdrew the business card. The name read “Sebastian Angelo D’Eath.”

Angel of . . ? 

I awoke to a beeping sound. Two paramedics stood over me. One held something against my chest. He let out a breath and gave me a smile. “Touch and go for a minute there. Thought we’d lost you.”

***

David Moores is the author of Attitude, a young adult novel published in September 2020 by Middleroad Publishers. It’s available on Amazon here. Dave began writing fiction after retiring from a consulting career where his writing skills were mostly dedicated to project reports - fictional too on occasion, he supposes. His debut novel, set within Lake Ontario’s sailing community, remains unpublished. Dave lives in Oakville, Ontario with his wife Chris and Gemma The Cat.

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including online and in-person writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Subury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.

New book: Attitude by David Moores

Attitude, a novel by David Moores

If the ice, snow and perpetual wind blowing in off the lake weren’t bad, now the citizens of Southmead have been hit with an outbreak of truly weird and criminal stuff. Fifteen-year-old Lyle, his best friend Garth, and Laura the girl of his dreams don't have wheels, don't have cash, certainly don't have guns, but they've got attitude, and if you're going to face down all the weird, what more do you need?

From Middleroad Publishers. Available on Amazon here.

David Moores started writing fiction “to see if I could” following a decision to finally retire from the workforce. Writing in turn started becoming a full-time job. Dave’s first novel, Windward Legs, was set in the sailing community in Ontario’s Golden Horseshoe Region where he races his own sailboat and lives with his wife Chris. 

See Brian Henry's schedule here, including online and in-person writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in Algonquin Park, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.