Paid in Blood (NCIS Series #1)

 (51 customer reviews)

Tyndale Press has gone through something of a revolution when I wasn't looking. I'm used to thinking of them as a publisher of traditional religious books. Several of which appear on my shelves. I'm not generally drawn to religious fiction, so I never realized that they are the big player in that genre, so I would never have noticed were it not that Mel Odom, who has written a whole bunch of books in genre that I do read a lot (Buffy, Angel, etc.), also has written several books for Tyndale. One, Paid In Blood, found its way onto my reading pile, and I found my nose buried in a piece of military fiction with a bit of a twist.

This novel, which I hope is the first of a series, is the story of a Naval Criminal Investigation Service team, that, in investigating the murder of a fellow investigator follows a series of clues across the world until they are in a desperate chase to keep a psychotic terrorist from starting world war three. The telling is quite well done...Read more

As a recently retired NCIS Special Agent, I started to read this book with much interest hoping for an accurate description of NCIS, its mission, and capabilities. Unfortunately, by the second chapter the inaccuracies were such that it totally destroyed any further hope I had for the book.

From the start, it should be noted that NCIS is a civilian federal law enforcement agency responsible for conducting felony criminal investigations specifically involving the Department of the Navy (U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps) and the United States, in general. Its Director and senior management are members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) and the Special Agent corps are Federal Criminal Investigators (GS-1811), with the same authority as the FBI, U.S. Customs Service, ATF, U.S. Secret Service, etc. While there is a small cadre of USN Intelligence Officers and USMC Criminal Investigators and Counterintelligence personnel assigned to NCIS, they are subordinate to the civilian...Read more

NCIS - Paid in Blood, where to start? First off the spine of the book says `Novel one' which indicates that there are more coming in this series, so rather than repeat a lot of what's been said in the other two reviews lets look at that aspect. I read an average of 4 - 6 books a month, split between fiction and non fiction, balanced between SCI-FI, Finance and Spirituality. That being said I've delved into my share of series books. If this is indeed the 1st book in a new series, as it appears to be, I have to say that Mel has done something that seems VERY difficult in writing. He's made a 1st book very easy to get involved with. Typically many series books start off using the first volume to fill in the entire back story on every primary character being utilized. Although I do agree that knowing the characters past helps you become involved in their present and care about their future, there have been some very good Volume One's that have been VERY hard to get through, due to all the...Read more