Book details of 'The Tin Man'

Title	The Tin Man
Author(s)	Dale Brown
ISBN	055311106X
Language	English
Publisher	Bantam Books

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Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
Patrick McLanahan, a sometime secret agent for the military and an associate of a high-tech company that manufactures weapons for the armed forces, is the hero of Dale Brown's fast-paced thriller The Tin Man. When McLanahan's kid brother, a rookie cop in Sacramento, is severely injured by a gang of international terrorists, McLanahan decides to take justice into his own hands and shut down their operation. In order to do so, McLanahan must figure out who these heavily-armed thugs are and track them down. He and the owner of the high-tech company develop a powerful weapon to help him accomplish that task--a bulletproof suit equipped with rocket thrusters that makes McLanahan a formidable fighting machine. McLanahan soon comes to be known as the tin man. Meanwhile, the criminal mastermind Gregory Townsend and his cohorts in the Aryan Brigade wreak havoc in California. They stage a violent armed robbery and try to wrest control of the booming trade in illegal drugs from neo-Nazi biker gangs. Townsend tells a new recruit that he and his men plan to become "the Microsoft of the methamphetamine trade"--but it seems likely that his goal is even larger and more sinister than that. This book should appeal to fans of Ian Fleming's James Bond thrillers. Like Bond, McLanahan gets to use a lot of cleverly-designed high-tech gadgets to extract himself from sticky situations. The Tin Man is packed with skillfully crafted action scenes. It's a pretty good yarn.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Brown's work is frequently compared with that of Tom Clancy, and there are a number of similarities. Both authors are well versed in military technology, and the command structure of the US military. Both have a solid grasp of the complexities of global politics (although these are often simplified for story-telling purposes), and military preparedness. In both cases the main stream of books comprise a series based around a particular character. In Brown's case the character is Patrick McLanahan, US Air Force heavy bomber bombardier and advanced weapons engineer. McLanahan is a rather interesting standout in the pantheon of thriller heroes in that there is not a lot of character development in action stories. McLanahan *does* advance--but for every step forward, he takes an equal step back, either within the book or in the next. This is probably necessary, since Brown's stories, like those of Cussler and Francis, are written to a very strict formula. (McLanahan might, in fact, be said to have regressed over the course of the series. In the initial books he was something of the stereotypical ice-man. As John Gray puts it in "Billy Bishop Goes to War" (cf.THBBGTWR.RVW), "You're part of a machine, so you have to stay very calm and cold. You and your machine work together to bring the other fellow down." Nowadays McLanahan frequently loses his temper, works himself "into a screaming rage, and [goes tearing] off over the top" to do battle with the enemy.) But, once again, this isn't about characterization, it's about technology. Specifically, it's about physics. Brown is very conversant with high tech weaponry, and his descriptions, while they may be slightly beyond the edge of the current state of deployment, should be quite achievable within a few years. In this book, though, there is a departure from the battlefield milieu to that of urban policing and terrorism. The Tin Man of the title wears a new kind of body armour made of a cloth that can be electrically stiffened to resist bullets, explosions, and even anti-tank rockets. We aren't told much about how this material works, so I don't have a particular problem with the fabric itself, but I certainly have difficulties with the way it is used. The suit can keep you from getting killed if you are hit by gunfire. Fair enough: bullet proof vests can do that. It'll even save you from prolonged automatic weapons fire, and while a bullet proof vest can't do that, it is reasonable to assume that greater coverage and rigidity would fit the bill. But it also saves the wearer from explosions, high-explosive rocket warheads, hundred foot drops, and even a fall into rotating helicopter blades. In these cases it doesn't matter how rigid the envelope is, momentum and inertia will ensure that the soft human body will be flattened over the inside of the suit, with a few broken bones and some ruptured organs thrown in for good measure. Phil Nuytten and Troy Hurtubise would undoubtedly be able to point out a number of ways that the most rigid body armour could kill someone. (I understand that the Grizzly Suit, made of titanium bonded to rubber with over a mile's worth of duct tape, will allow the wearer to walk away after being hit by a speeding truck--and Hurtubise still isn't satisfied with it.) There is also a possible problem with control. From various factors in the text (not least the fact that increases in attacks seem to create a power drain) it would appear that the rigidity of the suit is applied actively "on demand." This would require some kind of sensor network in the suit that must a) sense an event, b) communicate with the power pack, c) process the event, d) switch on the power, and e) channel the power to the correct part of the suit. Granted, conventional weapons generally operate at or around the speed of sound, while the suit net would operate near the speed of light, giving the suit an edge in terms of raw speed. But the suit would have to operate in a fairly complex fashion over distances measured in meters while the weapons only need to function in a linear fashion over centimetre ranges. In fact, you'd probably have to limit that to millimeters in order to maintain the integrity of the suit itself. (Brown does note that pointed objects can penetrate this type of armour while bullets cannot, but attributes the fact to differences in velocity, rather than the fact the bullets are stopped by a special weave that distributes energy while needles can slip between fabric threads.) The wearer of the suit is also able to deliver light slaps that break bones, and to punch through armoured glass. Frankly, nothing in the book seems to be able to support this. The suit may be able to prevent the puncher from getting hurt, but there doesn't seem to be anything that multiplies force. There is also the matter of a "jump" capability in the suit. "Jet packs" have not dropped much in size in forty years since the problems of thrust and flight control are simply not very tractable. Compressed air can, of course, be used for thrust, but it requires a very large reservoir in order to function. In addition, compressed air has a greater energy density than any current battery technology could ever hope to have, and using a battery to recharge compressed air in a portable unit makes no sense at all. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999
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Book description:

In his ten New York Times bestselling novels, Dale Brown pits men and technology against impossible odds, in stories so vivid and authentic you feel you are part of the action. Now the undisputed master of military suspense brings back aerial combat expert Patrick McLanahan--this time at the center of an undeclared war exploding on the streets of America.Some call him a terrorist. Others call him a vigilante hero. Dressed in a carbon-filament bodysuit that can instantly harden into stronger-than-steel protective armor, a mysterious figure the public has dubbed the Tin Man roams the urban landscape of Sacramento, California, on a search-and-destroy mission. While some want him dead and others want him decorated, only a handful of people know the truth of who he is: Patrick McLanahan, the nation's most heroic aerial warrior, now retired, who for fifteen years risked his life for his country in the U.S. military. He is a civilian now, engaged in scientific development for a high-tech company specializing in strategic devices for the armed forces--his workplace more the laboratory than the cockpit. But when his rookie cop brother is injured in a shootout following a bank robbery, McLanahan becomes a one-man army. The enemy is within, on the streets of his own country, and he is the avenger. His targets are international terrorist turned drug lord Gregory Townsend and his Aryan Brigade, which are masterminding the violence taking over the city. Townsend and the Brigade, out to destroy government authority in pursuit of their racist ideology, fear nothing. But there's one thing they haven't counted on.Wherever he goes McLanahan's swift and violent justice overpowers the enemy--but at a price. Innocent lives are put in jeopardy whenever he appears, because the police lose tactical control. The more he tests the limits of his technological power--and his own courage--the more he is forced to face up to the implications of what he is doing. Has his passion for revenge taken him over the line? Is his personal war part of the solution to the violent crime sweeping the country...or is it part of the problem?In Patrick McLanahan, a patriot become a renegade, Dale Brown has given us a hero who must ultimately decide between his own ability to single-handedly take on the forces of violence and the power of established laws to secure a peaceful society. Authoritative in its cutting-edge technology and dazzling in its portrayal of life on the streets of America's cities, The Tin Man is a novel of consummate suspense.