Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

Her Show of Force by Mike Krentz is a military suspense novel and the first book in the upcoming Mahoney and Squire Series. The book revolves around a Captain in the United States Navy named Kate Mahoney, whose newest promotion has once again taken her far from her teen son Patrick. The toll on their already strained relationship is only eclipsed by the demands of being in a position of leadership in one of the world's most historically patriarchal organizations. The story occasionally moves between timelines in which the reader is introduced to a backstory, particularly as it relates to Patrick and Kate, her history with the military, and her history with Patrick's biological father. Kate is tossed into the deep end of a diplomatic nightmare with a stand-off that has the potential to be cataclysmic, but as the situation escalates and the scramble for answers ensues, Patrick hits his stride and the gas pedal, illegally, as a distressed teenager without a father as a role model and a mother who is perpetually thousands of miles away. “This is why women shouldn’t be senior officers. Bleeding hearts can’t lead in this navy.”

I love a good story about single mothers, but when you combine a single mother in a position of professional authority and then top it off with the San Francisco Bay Area, my hometown, I'm all in like Kate with a neat double Glenmorangie. In Her Show of Force, Mike Krentz does not do Kate the disservice of making it appear as if she should feel bad about her career just because she does not have the luxury of a spouse at home. Servicemen have their children in the care of family members all the time, but somehow when women do it there's a problem. What I liked most about Kate is that she is not afraid to stand her ground and knows that the choices she makes can have a global impact. She is so much smarter than the men who have micro-aggressions carved into their bones and frequently resort to outright misogyny. Kate is raising a young man not to be like the ones that surround her, and especially not like Patrick's father. On the flip side, she is saving nations from making earth-shattering mistakes based on false information. From start to finish this is a solid story and one worth picking up if you enjoy good military fiction with contemporary themes.