Lion at the Gate

by Bertrand Younger Choice

Overview

Gang violence has reached epic proportions in America. Restrained by the rule of law and shrinking budgets, local police do not have the resources, manpower, or training to adequately address gang violence. Military units are not legally allowed to intervene. Unfortunately, this leaves criminal street gangs free to wreak havoc over large areas of Los Angeles.

In this gripping tale, Gunnery Sergeant Jack “JD” Davis, an active duty Special Operations Marine, has always tried to do the right thing and provide calm strength, even in highly stressful situations. But when members of the Gatos gang attack his niece and then that same gang brutalizes the other members of his family, he is pushed beyond the point of restraint. When JD decides to unleash his lethal skills to neutralize the threat, the Gatos gangbangers have no idea they are about to experience the full weight of having a lion at their gate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781665764155
Publisher:	Archway Publishing
Publication date:	01/07/2025
Pages:	454
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.01(d)

About the Author

Bertrand Younger Choice has extensive knowledge of U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations and the American criminal justice system. He has devoted most of his adult life to serving as a Deputy District Attorney in both Los Angeles and Sutter counties, and then as a criminal defense attorney in Sacramento County. For over ten years he also served as a Judge Pro Tem in civil and criminal proceedings in Sacramento County.

Editorial Reviews

2025-04-09
In Choice’s novel, an elite special ops soldier sets out on an unsanctioned mission to dispense karmic justice to a South Central Los Angeles gang that traumatized his family.

Gunnery Sergeant Jack “JD” Davis, who’s part of the ultra-elite Obsidian Raiders (the special operations force of the Marine Corps), and his crew have just completed a seemingly impossible objective: to rescue the 19-year-old daughter of the U.S. secretary of state from a Mexican cartel, described as “the most powerful drug-trafficking organization in the world.” She was abducted while on vacation in Cancún and later held in a seemingly impenetrable fortress, but the Raiders—with surgical precision—managed to free her, while nearly wiping the cartel from the face of the earth. However, when Davis visits his family in LA on leave in a neighborhood that’s been taken over by gun-toting gangs, he soon finds his regimented world turned upside down. Before he arrived, gangsters raped his teenage niece, and, later, they attack his elderly mother in her own home and torture and murder his nephew. Torn between embracing his overwhelming desire for revenge and following his strict moral compass as a Marine, Davis embarks on a perilous journey of self-discovery that could destroy his family and imprison him forever. Choice’s novel seamlessly fuses military and techno-thriller tropes with crime fiction. Readers will find some of this novel’s secondary characters to be underdeveloped, but Choice does a commendable job of making the primary players three-dimensional and identifiable. For example, Jesus “Ladrillo” Martinez, the head of the Gatos gang, is impressively complex. The novel’s greatest strength, though, is its deep exploration into what it means to be a Raider—and a bona fide hero: “If you willingly put yourself on the line for someone else when you didn’t have to, then that’s heroism.”

Fans of Tom Clancy and W.E.B. Griffin will find this novel entertaining and thematically powerful.

Kirkus Reviews