I just greedily devoured the five Alex Fletcher books by Steven Konkoly. Ooh-rah! I am ready to stockpile food and water and toilet paper. In the first book, The Jakarta Pandemic, Alex struggles through PTSD to save his family from the collapse of American society. His innate paranoia kicks into insane levels, but Konkoly makes the plot eerily realistic. Just how do you survive a contagious virus that triggers mass hysteria and a loss of infrastructure? I’m thinking a chocolate stash…..

Konkoly draws upon his military experience for amazing realism in The Perseid Collapse, an “event” that forms the basis for the final four books of the Alex Fletcher series. This event crumbles the United States, which had barely recovered from the pandemic of a few years before. Alex is better prepared this time but the stakes are higher. The event, which many speculate is an EMP, or asteroid, leads to a collapse of all the major cities, electronics failure, and a flood of refugees. Alex is on a mission to rescue his son from Boston, getting trapped between hastily assembled marines and militias.

The final three books remind me of Tom Clancy’s or Robert Ludlum’s style in their complexity and global focus, with heroic characters giving their all as the world changes mightily after the collapse of the US. And Alex continues his single-minded focus on saving his family and friends. Konkoly creates a well-developed character in Alex Fletcher, along with a wide cast of supporting folks. An interesting theme in these books is the conflict between “government conspiracy” folks and the military. I don’t know how such an apocalypse might fall out (pun intended), but our house is not prepared for any of it. I’m off to buy some chocolate.