Journey/SecretAgentMan Volume 1

The Life and Times of Lawrence Howard

Fiction - Historical - Event/Era
200 Pages
Reviewed on 06/03/2016
Buy on Amazon

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    Book Review

Reviewed by Rabia Tanveer for Readers' Favorite

Journey: The Life and Times of Lawrence Howard by Mykl Walsh and Richard Saunders is the story of a young man who spent all his life keeping his brilliant mind hidden from people. Lawrence Ronald Howard was born just a few months after the death of Albert Einstein. After the death of a genius, a new genius was born, but this genius did not want attention for his talent. On the surface, he looks just like a regular Joe, but on the inside he is struggling with the brilliance inside of him that is just bursting to get out. He has no idea that there is a force behind him that is helping him keep his secret, but he is destined for great things. What is it that makes him different? By keeping his brilliance inside, is he driving himself mad?

This is a tremendous beginning to a great series. The short story takes you back in time, where you will find a story within a story that will make you believe the luminosity you read. Lawrence Howard seems like a man who can be anyone among us and that is beauty of it. We all can make huge differences if we are given the opportunity. He got it and he used it to the best of his abilities. The plot was great. Walsh handled the timeline and the intensity of the story brilliantly. There is nothing I would want to change about this story. This is a great start to a series that no doubt will be an immediate success.

Raanan Geberer

Journey/SecretAgentMan, Vol. 1 by Mykl Walsh is an unusual hybrid. It starts out as a short story about space explorers discovering a parallel planet to Earth. Although human life here has disappeared, one of them finds a time capsule that contains, among other things, a novel, SecretAgentMan by Richard Saunders, about the adventures of Lawrence R. Howard, a hero with the IQ of an Einstein and the undercover skills of a James Bond. Walsh gives us several chapters of SecretAgentMan in an attempt to whet our appetite for his next volume.

In Saunders’ novel, upon Howard’s birth in Massachusetts, a group of mystics in France hail the birth of the “Defender” who would save the world from the forces of evil. As an adult, Howard, aided by his network of secret agents and his semi-secretive Phoenix Foundation, stymies unscrupulous computer pros who buy up all the domain names that could be used by a well-meaning charity; combats age discrimination on a TV show based on Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice”; sets up a foundation to help the Catholic Church overcome the problem of pedophile priests, and more.

In Journey/ SecretAgentMan, Vol. 1, Mykl Walsh shows his familiarity with recent history — the book ends with Daniel Trask, the Trump-like character, entering the race for president. He also is a keen student of pop culture —the fictional novel’s title, SecretAgentMan, is an homage to the 1960s spy-adventure TV series, Secret Agent. People who lived through the era will enjoy the names Walsh (or Saunders) has given familiar figures – for example, the 1960s' John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon contest is described as a contest between John Fitzsimmons and Richard Newhouse. All in all, if you like spy stories, conspiracy theories, techno-thrillers and/or science fiction, Journey/SecretAgentMan, Vol. 1 fits the bill.

K.C. Finn

Journey by Mykl Walsh is a short story prelude to the novel SecretAgentMan by author Richard Saunders. In this prequel tale of fate and fiction, a child is born in the winter of 1956, exactly ten months after the passing of the great Albert Einstein. The plot of the story then follows the life of our hero, Lawrence Ronald Howard, as he grows up, keenly aware that he now possesses the reincarnated mind of Einstein. Desperate to use the incredible gift he’s been given for good, Lawrence also attempts to hide this power from those around him as trouble and intrigue naturally gravitate towards him. This seemingly meek man is destined to change the course of history, even as it unfolds before him.

The combination of historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy is a fascinating one, and it’s been done particularly well by Mykl Walsh in this short but interesting tale. Lawrence Ronald Howard is an everyday hero whom all readers are likely to relate to, and though he has incredible powers of intellect, he faces genuine challenges and limitations that ground the plot in reality. There isn’t a great deal of characterization outside of Lawrence, but the real life encounters and experiences of SecretAgentMan author Richard Saunders fill the central character’s tale with incredibly authentic detail. Fans of classic suspense, modern historical drama, and espionage are certain to be fascinated by this well written tale of one man’s quest to right some of the many wrongs on the planet he’s joined.