“The Target” by David Baldacci (Macmillan)

The third Will Robie thriller sets him and Jessica Reel on a collision courts with the Hermit Kingdom…

The President knows it’s a perilous, high-risk assignment. If he gives the order, he has the opportunity to take down a global menace, once and for all. If the mission fails, he would face certain impeachment, and the threats against the nation would multiply. So the president turns to the one team that can pull off the impossible: Will Robie and his partner, Jessica Reel.

Together, Robie and Reel’s talents as assassins are unmatched. But there are some in power who don’t trust the pair. They doubt their willingness to follow orders. And they will do anything to see that the two assassins succeed, but that they do not survive.

As they prepare for their mission, Reel faces a personal crisis that could well lead old enemies right to her doorstep, resurrecting the ghosts of her earlier life and bringing stark danger to all those close to her. And all the while, Robie and Reel are stalked by a new adversary: an unknown and unlikely assassin, a woman who has trained her entire life to kill, and who has her own list of targets – a list that includes Will Robie and Jessica Reel.

The Target is another great addition to this relatively-new series from Baldacci. Taking the popular central character of government assassin, the author has managed to forge a somewhat original path. The novel is gripping, excellently-paced, and well-researched. As has become the norm with Baldacci’s novels, I really enjoyed reading this.

News: Vince Flynn’s MITCH RAPP Series to Continue!

Last September, I wrote a piece about how the movie Olympus Has Fallen bore some incredible similarities to Vince Flynn’s Transfer of Power. The piece was pretty short, but I also mentioned in it the fact that Flynn passed away in June 2013. It was also reported, through Flynn’s newsletter, that the planned next novel in the series, The Survivor, had been indefinitely suspended.

Since then, however, some very interesting news has arrived in my inbox! On June 22nd, Flynn’s Newsletter announced that “Mitch Rapp series will continue; The Survivor Tentatively Scheduled for 2015”!

As it turns out, one of my favourite thriller authors, Kyle Mills, has been selected to continue the series by Flynn’s estate and Emily Bestler, Senior VP and Editor-in-Chief of Emily Bestler Books. From the press release:

Mills will complete The Survivor, the book Flynn was writing at the time of his death on June 19, 2013, and then write two additional Mitch Rapp novels. The Survivor is tentatively scheduled to release in the fall of 2015.

“I’m really honored to have been asked to continue the Mitch Rapp series,” Mills said, “Vince was a great guy who helped me out in my career and as a diehard Rapp fan, I know how devastated his readers are. They’re big shoes to fill, but I’m looking forward to the challenge of continuing an iconic thriller character.”

“Vince and Mitch Rapp are so beloved by readers,” Bestler said, “It’s wonderful that we’ve found just the right partner to uphold the legacy of both.”

“To Vince’s wonderful fans, thank you for your love, support and patience,” Vince’s widow, Lysa Flynn said, “Vince was very proud of his team and we are confident that Kyle Mills will be a great addition. God bless and keep the faith!”

Mills is the author of the Mark Beamon thrillers and a handful of stand-alone thrillers. Most recently, he wrote The Immortalists (which, I am ashamed to admit, I have not read yet) and also The Ares Decision, The Utopia Experiment, and the upcoming The Von Neumann Machine – books 8, 10 and 1? of Tom Clancy’s Covert-One series. Many of Mills’s novels are very hard to find in the UK, which I think is a crime. It is also why it has always taken me a long time to get around to reading them – I discovered his novels well before CR was ever a thing.

Mark Beamon Series: Rising Phoenix, Storming Heaven, Free Fall, Sphere of Influence and Darkness Falls

Stand-Alone Novels: Burn Factor, Smoke Screen, Fade, The Second Horseman, Lords of Corruption, The Immortalists

Quick Reviews: “Bullseye”, “The Innocent”, and “The Hit” by David Baldacci (Macmillan)

Two novels and a short story introducing a new hero from one of the modern masters of thriller fiction…

I really enjoyed all three of these stories. I also read them quite a while ago, in preparation for the release of The Target. I’m not sure why I didn’t get around to posting reviews of them sooner, but I wanted to mention them here. Because they’re excellent. I’ll keep things short, though…

“A Colder War” by Charles Cumming (Harper)

Tom Kell returns…

A top-ranking Iranian military official is blown up while trying to defect to the West. An investigative journalist is arrested and imprisoned for writing an article critical of the Turkish government. An Iranian nuclear scientist is assassinated on the streets of Tehran. These three incidents, seemingly unrelated, have one crucial link. Each of the three had been recently recruited by Western intelligence, before being removed or killed.

Then Paul Wallinger, MI6’s most senior agent in Turkey, dies in a puzzling plane crash. Fearing the worst, MI6 bypasses the usual protocol and brings disgraced agent Tom Kell in from the cold to investigate. Kell soon discovers what Wallinger had already begun to suspect – that there’s a mole somewhere in the Western intelligence, a traitor who has been systematically sabotaging scores of joint intelligence operations in the Middle East.

This is the second novel to star Tom Kell, disgraced SIS agent, and apparently the services new go-to problem fixer. At least, for problems that need to be fixed quietly and delicately – more so than the secret service normally requires. A Colder War improves on A Foreign Country in almost every way (quite the feat, given how good the previous novel was), and hopefully marks the beginning of a long-running series to star Kell. This is another engrossing, expertly crafted espionage thriller.

Short Review: “A Foreign Country” by Charles Cumming (Harper)

An excellent spy thriller

On the vacation of a lifetime in Egypt, an elderly French couple are brutally murdered. Days later, a meticulously-planned kidnapping takes place on the streets of Paris.

Amelia Levene, the first female Chief of MI6, has disappeared without a trace, six weeks before she is due to take over as the most influential spy in Europe. It is the gravest crisis MI6 has faced in more than a decade. Desperate not only to find her, but to keep her disappearance a secret, Britain’s top intelligence agents turn to one of their own: disgraced MI6 officer Thomas Kell.

Tossed out of the Service only months before, Kell is given one final chance to redeem himself – find Amelia Levene, at any cost. The trail leads Kell to France and Tunisia, where he uncovers a shocking secret and a conspiracy that could have unimaginable repercussions for Britain and its allies. Only Kell stands in the way of personal and political catastrophe.

Charles Cumming is one of my favourite authors – in the thriller genre or otherwise. He writes tightly-plotted, gripping espionage thrillers in the tradition of John le Carré and others of that era. [It is, perhaps somewhat cliché to now compare Cumming to le Carré, but it really is apt.] Cumming’s novels are decidedly British, in that they are devoid of melodrama or the dick-swinging swagger that can characterise American-authored espionage thrillers (see, for example, Vince Flynn and Brad Thor). They are, however, just as gripping.

Charles Cumming’s A COLDER WAR Mole Hunt

So, Harper Collins are running a special competition to celebrate the release of Charles Cumming’s latest international spy thriller, A COLDER WAR. For those of you who don’t know who he is or haven’t read his work (shame on you!), he is an absolutely fantastic author, and one of my favourites (of any genre).

The competition involves a mole hunt. The name of the mole has been hidden amongst blog posts around the internet (see the banner, right).

In each post, there are a couple of questions (mine are below). The first letter in each answer is in the name of the mole. Collect all the answers, and email your answer to killerreads[at]harpercollins.com. The winner gets a Kindle!

*

So, let us get on. Here are the two videos, and their corresponding questions…

1. Who does America have a so-called “Special Relationship” with?

2. What is Charles’ favourite thing about the writing process?

I have some catching up to do, still, but I loved Typhoon and The Trinity Six. On Friday, I started reading A Foreign Country, the first novel to feature A Colder War’s protagonist (Thomas Kell), and will be starting in on the new novel imminently (if I haven’t already)!

Charles Cumming is the author of: A Spy By Nature, The Spanish Game, Typhoon, The Trinity Six, The Hidden Man, A Foreign Country, and A Colder War

“The Last Man” by Vince Flynn (Simon & Schuster / Atria Books)

The final Mitch Rapp novel

An invaluable CIA asset has gone missing, and with him, secrets that in the wrong hands could prove disastrous. The only question is: Can Mitch Rapp find him first?

Joe Rickman, head of CIA clandestine operations in Afghanistan, has been kidnapped and his four bodyguards executed in cold blood. But Mitch Rapp’s experience and nose for the truth make him wonder if something even more sinister isn’t afoot. Irene Kennedy, director of the CIA, has dispatched him to Afghanistan to find Rickman at all costs.

Rapp, however, isn’t the only one looking for Rickman. The FBI is too, and it quickly becomes apparent that they’re less concerned with finding Rickman than placing the blame on Rapp.

With CIA operations in crisis, Rapp must be as ruthless and deceitful as his enemies if he has any hope of finding Rickman and completing his mission. But with elements within his own government working against both him and American interests, will Rapp be stopped dead before he can succeed?

The Mitch Rapp series is in many ways the one that kick-started my passion for international and espionage thrillers. After reading Transfer of Power, the novel that introduced Rapp as the man who takes back the White House from terrorists, I quickly caught up with the rest of the series, and have read every one since. The Last Man is, sadly, the last novel. Flynn passed away last year, after a long battle with cancer. It’s an awkward ending, however. Thankfully, though, while the novel began shakily, it ended strongly. Long-time fans of the series and characters won’t be disappointed, as this is another fast-paced, gripping international thriller, featuring all of the key series characters.

“The Accident” by Chris Pavone (Crown Publishing/Faber)

An engaging suspense, featuring a secret manuscript, a conspiracy, and unwitting pawns caught in the middle.

As dawn approaches in New York, literary agent Isabel Reed is turning the final pages of a mysterious, anonymous manuscript, racing through the explosive revelations about powerful people, as well as long-hidden secrets about her own past. In Copenhagen, veteran CIA operative Hayden Gray, determined that this sweeping story be buried, is suddenly staring down the barrel of an unexpected gun. And in Zurich, the author himself is hiding in a shadowy expat life, trying to atone for a lifetime’s worth of lies and betrayals with publication of The Accident, while always looking over his shoulder.

Over the course of one long, desperate, increasingly perilous day, these lives collide as the book begins its dangerous march toward publication, toward saving or ruining careers and companies, placing everything at risk—and everyone in mortal peril.  The rich cast of characters—in publishing and film, politics and espionage—are all forced to confront the consequences of their ambitions, the schisms between their ideal selves and the people they actually became.

The action rockets around Europe and across America, with an intricate web of duplicities stretching back a quarter-century to a dark winding road in upstate New York, where the shocking truth about the accident itself is buried.

Pavone’s The Expats was an international bestseller – one I seem to have missed almost entirely. When The Accident popped up on NetGalley, though, its synopsis sent it right to the top of my Must Read titles. The story is located at the confluence of a number of my key interests: politics, media, international relations/espionage, and publishing. While the novel is not perfect, it is nevertheless a gripping, fast-paced thriller that entertained and gripped me from the start.

Upcoming: “The Man With the Golden Mind” by Tom Vater (Exhibit A)

Last year, Exhibit A published Tom Vater’s debut thriller, The Cambodian Book of the Dead. Sadly, it ended up being one of the thrillers that went onto my eReader and I promptly got distracted by other things, and it has thus-far gone unread. Now that this second novel in the series, The Man With the Golden Mind (April 2014), is to be released, I’m going to have to get my act together and get caught up!

“In trouble again… and a long way from home…”

Julia Rendel asks Maier to investigate the twenty-five year old murder of her father, an East German cultural attaché who was killed near a fabled CIA airbase in central Laos in 1976. But before the detective can set off, his client is kidnapped right out of his arms.

Maier follows Julia’s trail to the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he learns different parties, including his missing client are searching for a legendary CIA file crammed with Cold War secrets. But the real prize is the file’s author, a man codenamed Weltmeister, a former US and Vietnamese spy and assassin no one has seen for a quarter century.

To learn more about Tom’s novels and writing, be sure to visit his website and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

An Interview with DAVE HUTCHINSON

Let’s start with an introduction: Who is Dave Hutchinson?

Dave Hutchinson is a 53-year-old journalist and writer, born in Sheffield and living in London. He likes cats and hates mushrooms. He is obsessed with Twitter to a disturbing degree.

Your latest novel, Europe In Autumn, is published by Solaris. How would you introduce the novel to a new reader?

Europe In Autumn is, for want of a better term, a near-future espionage thriller. It’s set in a Europe where the EU has begun to fracture for various reasons, and new nations are springing up all over the place. Rudi, the central character, is a chef who becomes involved with a group of couriers and people smugglers, and finds himself mixed up in what may be a very large conspiracy. It wasn’t originally planned as part of a series, but while I was writing it I had an idea for a companion novel, and since I finished it I’ve started to see a possible sequel. We’ll see how things go.

Want to Read: “Jack of Spies” by David Downing (Old Street)

A twist on the “Upcoming” posts that I frequently write, I’m going to start posting a few more of these – looking at novels that are already out that I really want to read. Some of these will be recently-released books that I just happened to miss, but I’ll also be featuring older titles that I’ve only just stumbled across, or have been meaning to read for years.

I’ve never read anything by David Downing, and I’m not really sure why. It is probably just down to the fact that I get so many books these days that, if it doesn’t arrive in the post, or isn’t from an established series that I’ve been following for some time, I often just can’t get around to it. David Downing, however, I have been aware of (he is the author of the Station series of spy novels), just never had the money to buy the books when I was reminded of them. Jack Of Spies may just change this. It is the first in a new World War I espionage series, and it sounds really good:

Jack McColl is a globe-trotting salesman for a luxury car firm. He is also a part-time spy for the fledgling Secret Service on the eve of the First World War, doing London’s bidding wherever internal or external enemies threaten the security of the British Empire. As 1913 ends he is in China, checking out the German naval base at Tsingtao between automobile demonstrations in Peking and Shanghai. Caitlin Hanley is a young Irish-American journalist with the sort of views that most British men would find dangerously advanced. McColl is no exception, but once captivated he finds himself unwilling to give her up – even when Caitlin's radical politics and family connections threaten to compromise his undeclared career as a spy. Then the pair become involved in a plot that threatens the Empire in its hour of greatest need...

I’m very intrigued by this. Anyone read it? Also, how great is that cover?

“The Violent Century” by Lavie Tidhar (Hodder)

A strange-yet-brilliant blend of Watchmen-style Super-Heroes and John le Carré Spy Fiction

They’d never meant to be heroes.

For seventy years they’d guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable at first, bound together by a shared fate. Until a night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account... and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism, a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms; of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields, to answer one last, impossible question: What makes a hero?

The Violent Century is, much to my shame, the first novel of Tidhar’s that I’ve read. And it’s quite the impressive accomplishment. Tidhar is not a stranger to pushing the envelope – see, for example, his World Fantasy Award-winning Osama – and in The Violent Century, he has created an original, engrossing fusion of noir-ish super-heroes and gritty espionage thriller. The publicity material that came with the ARC managed to capture it very well – “Watchmen meets John le Carre”. This is a very good novel.

Upcoming: “The Violent Century” by Lavie Tidhar (Hodder)

This is one of my most-anticipated books of the year. Which is great, because I started reading the ARC today! Hopefully, therefore, I’ll get the review up next week. Hodder unveiled the cover today, so here it is…

I really like it, too. Atmospheric, a classic-feel, and I think the limited colour palette was an excellent Idea. Here’s the synopsis:

They’d never meant to be heroes.

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg, inseparable friends, bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin, in the aftermath of the Second World War, and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account… and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now, recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire, Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism – a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms, of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields – to answer one last, impossible question:

What makes a hero?

Guest Post: “On Mind Control” by David Nickle

No question about it. Mind control is more than a trope. It’s a bona fide kink.

You can verify this with a simple Google search (that you should probably do from home, when the kids are asleep or your parents are out), or you can take my word for it: The idea of bending another’s will to one’s own, for whatever purpose, is something that a great many people find fascinating, in that way.

It shouldn’t be surprising: mind control, like the most popular kinks, is all about power differentials – the savant who can exercise said control being the “top”, and the poor, usually uncommonly attractive and unattainable shlub on the receiving end being the “bottom”.

My novel Rasputin’s Bastards is all about mind control. The story covers decades in the lives of specially-selected and trained psychic powerhouses, working on behalf of the old Soviet KGB against their counterparts at Langley, in an Amazing-Kreskin variation of the Great Game. The psychics in this book engage in astral projection, and are able to enter the minds and bodies of properly-conditioned sleeper agents.

“The Alchemist of Souls” by Anne Lyle (Angry Robot)

Book One of Night’s Masque

When Tudor explorers returned from the New World, they brought back a name out of half-forgotten Viking legend: skraylings. Red-sailed ships followed in the explorers’ wake, bringing Native American goods – and a skrayling ambassador – to London. But what do these seemingly magical beings really want in Elizabeth I’s capital?

Mal Catlyn, a down-at-heel swordsman, is seconded to the ambassador’s bodyguard, but assassination attempts are the least of his problems. What he learns about the skraylings and their unholy powers could cost England her new ally – and Mal Catlyn his soul.

File Under: Fantasy [ Midsummer Magic | Skraylings | Double Trouble | Comedy of Terrors ]

In The Alchemist of Souls, Anne Lyle has created a fascinating, richly detailed version of Elizabethan England filled with intrigue, politicking, plenty of espionage and, above all, engaging and interesting characters. With beautiful prose, Lyle has easily written one of the best debuts of the year.

“Edie Investigates” by Nick Harkaway

An introduction to the protagonist of Angelmaker

There has been a strange death in the quiet village of Shrewton: old Donny Caspian has lost his head. In the Copper Kettle tea rooms, Tom Rice, a junior nobody from the Treasury, puzzles over the details of the case. He has been sent by his superiors to oversee the investigation, but is he supposed to help or hinder? At the next table, octogenarian superspy Edie Banister nibbles a slice of cake and struggles not to become Miss Marple. But what is the connection between the two? Who killed Donny Caspian, and why? Taking in Rice’s present and Edie’s daring past, from duels on shipboard to death in back alleys, we are introduced to a character from Harkaway’s upcoming novel, Angelmaker.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this short story. As an introduction to Angelmaker, I can’t imagine it’s very necessary. As an introduction to Harkaway’s writing style, it is a story that you will probably find the words “endearing” and “delightful” used to describe it, and its content full of “whimsy”. While they are accurate, I think it would also be necessary to add “frustrating” and even “irritating” to the description. I have extremely mixed feelings about this. Part of this may be because of my mood when I read it – I was having quite the bout of book-indecision – and yet, even with hindsight, I still find myself less-than-satisfied with this short story.

“House Divided” by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Press)

A Rogue General, Illegal Wire-Taps, and DeMarco’s in the Middle

With his boss out of commission, Joe DeMarco is on his own, a sacrificial pawn in a lethal game between a master spy and a four-star army general.

When the NSA was caught wiretapping U.S. citizens without warrants, a scandal erupted and the program came to a screeching halt. But the man who spearheaded the most sophisticated eavesdropping operation in history wasn’t about to sit by while his country sleepwalked into another 9/11. Instead, he moved the program into the shadows. So when the NSA records a rogue military group murdering two American civilians, they can’t exactly walk over to the Pentagon and demand to know what’s going on. That doesn’t mean their hands are tied, however. As the largest intelligence service in the country, both in money and manpower, they have plenty of options — mostly illegitimate.

DeMarco learns all too well just what the NSA is capable of, but he doesn’t like being used…

I’ve been a fan of Lawson’s DeMarco series ever since I read The Inside Ring. House Divided is the sixth book in the series, and it is quite possibly the best yet. Certainly a series that deserves far more attention than it receives.

“The Trinity Six”, by Charles Cumming (Harper Collins)

Spies, Cold War politics, and one unsuspecting history professor caught in the middle…

London, 1992. Late one night, Edward Crane, 76, is declared dead at a London hospital. An obituary describes him only as a ‘resourceful career diplomat’. But Crane was much more than that – and the circumstances surrounding his death are far from what they seem.

Fifteen years later, academic Sam Gaddis needs money. When a journalist friend asks for his help researching a sixth member of the notorious Trinity spy ring, Gaddis knows that she’s onto a story that could turn his fortunes around. But within hours the journalist is dead, apparently from a heart attack.

Taking over her investigation, Gaddis trails a man who claims to know the truth about Edward Crane. Europe still echoes with decades of deadly disinformation on both sides of the Iron Curtain. And as Gaddis follows a series of leads across the continent, he approaches a shocking revelation – one which will rock the foundations of politics from London to Moscow…

This is the second novel by Charles Cumming I’ve read, and both have been superb in every way: prose, plot, pace, and characterisation – Cumming really knows how to write. The Trinity Six harkens back to the glory years of Cold War espionage thrillers, but with a contemporary feel and a historian’s perspective. From the very beginning, I was utterly riveted by this thriller, and loved every minute I was reading it.

“House Justice”, by Mike Lawson (Atlantic Monthly Press)

A press-leak, a CIA asset killed, a quest for vengeance and accountability

An American defence contractor attempts to sell US missile technology to the Iranians — and the CIA knows all about it thanks to a spy in Tehran. But then the story is leaked to an ambitious journalist and the spy is exposed, brutally tortured, and executed.

Furious, CIA Director Jake LaFountaine isn’t about to let the death of his spy go unpunished. A valuable asset has been callously sacrificed, and he’s going to find out who did it no matter how many rules he has to break. DeMarco’s boss, Speaker of the House John Fitzpatrick Mahoney has his own reasons to get to the bottom of the leak: he once had a fling with the journalist, and now that she’s in jail for refusing to reveal her source, she’s threatening to expose their affair unless he helps get her out.

DeMarco and the CIA aren’t the only ones looking for the source of the leak. Someone else wants to avenge the spy’s death and is tailing DeMarco, hoping DeMarco will lead him to his prey.

A CIA asset in Iran has been outed and executed. The culprit needs to be found. The Tyler & Tyler firm, attempting to negotiate an arms technology deal with Iran, getting them the tech they need to improve guidance systems of their missiles, seems to be in the middle of the political shit-storm that erupts.

Sandra Whitmore, the author of the news piece that revealed the identity of the CIA spy, has suggested it was a member of the CIA who gave her the asset’s name, and that the spooks had been covering up the story and operation.

What gets Joe DeMarco (and his irascible boss) involved in the case, is when the Director of the CIA goes on television and points the finger instead at Congress, who were briefed and fully aware of the operation. Naturally, DeMarco’s boss, John Fitzpatrick Mahoney, Speaker of the House wants to prevent any embarrasment for his party and also Congress as a whole (experiencing, as in real life, rock-bottom support from the public). Mahoney is a great character. The best description of him is offered by his secretary of almost thirty years, Mavis:

“He was an alcoholic and womanizer and played dangerous games with the taxpayers’ money, money that he treated as his own. He was lucky other people didn’t know what she knew; if they did, he would probably be serving time in federal prison.”

There is something of the Judith Miller scandal (also re-created in a Kate Beckinsale movie) to the first half of this novel. The Miller-Plame case is mentioned, but instead of just naming a spy, as Miller did, Whitmore’s story results in a spy’s death. In other words, a whole new world of trouble. It’s cases like these that really show the arrogance and self-important, self-serving martyr complex of certain journalistic ‘celebrities’. Lawson deals with this very well. Despite her wish to be a paragon of journalistic martyrdom, Whitmore doesn’t want to be in prison, so she is blackmailing Mahoney (they conducted an affair, back in the day) to pull strings to get her sprung. Enter DeMarco, who’s sent by the Speaker to stop her talking and try to free her. As DeMarco sneers at her, “So you wanna be a martyr but you’re not willing to burn at the stake.”

The CIA and Mahoney are not the only factions interested in the case, however, which makes life difficult and dangerous for DeMarco. An assassin we only know as “The Florist” has been pulled out of retirement to do a job involving the Whitmore case – specifically, to avenge the death of the spy. After he discovers DeMarco’s visit to Whitmore, he starts taking an interest in Joe’s own investigation, and starts to follow him. Meanwhile, members of Tyler & Tyler, and various peripheral associates and hired-guns, are trying to cover their tracks by tying up loose ends and silencing potential leaks. Eventually, DeMarco is paired up with a CIA agent to exact revenge on those who caused Mahata’s death. Joe finds himself experiencing serious reservations about both the CIA’s methods and also ultimate objectives. It’s certainly a look at the darker, less-idealised side of American politics and homeland defence.

Lawson’s novels are dependable thrillers: interesting, detailed, with realistic characters, great Washington politics and intrigue. The author has a great gift for portraying DC politics: it’s not comical, it’s not caricatured, but it also doesn’t put a shine on things that do anything but sparkle.

House Justice is a novel of two parts – events around the middle set DeMarco on a different course, with a different investigation and agenda (the result of a CIA-Mahoney alliance). The stakes are higher and the enemy more deadly. Lawson does a good job of keeping the novel rattling along, but when the first ‘part’ was over, there was a slight dip in momentum as the second part picks up and is developed. It’s a pity, as usually I can sit and read a DeMarco novel very quickly. House Justice therefore has a different feel to previous novels, but it is by no means less enjoyable.

House Justice is a classic DeMarco thriller: fascinating and realistic characters, inside-the-beltway intrigue, and a well-thought-out plot sprinkled with surprises. I must admit that I tend to prefer my thrillers with a little more pace, and this is where House Justice differs from previous volumes in the series. At times this felt a little too leisurely for the genre, but it does help set a tone for DeMarco’s jobs (nowhere near as exciting in real life as we’re led to believe by Hollywood). The plot feels spun-out, but the ending is satisfying as all the threads are pulled together well.

If you like Washington-based political thrillers, then House Justice should certainly appeal. Lawson is one of the better authors producing such novels, and even though this novel was slower than I might have hoped, he continues to display why he is ahead of the pack.

For fans of: Kyle Mills, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Joseph Finder, Tom Clancy, Andrew Britton, James Twining

“Even”, by Andrew Grant (Macmillan)

An exciting, important new voice in the thriller genre

After stumbling across a dead body in a Manhattan alley, things go from bad to worse for David Trevellyan. In New York working for the British Consulate (on a “communications” contract), Trevellyan has no way of knowing how much trouble he’s about to be in. He is arrested at the scene, accused of murder (complete with bogus “witness”), and held in lockup for an eventful night with Dereck the Nazi. Then the FBI get involved and his employers (the British Government) wash their hands of him. This all happens within the first couple of chapters – so far, so very intriguing.

As accusations and his supposed crimes escalate, and seeing no way to clear his name through legitimate, normal channels, Trevellyan decides to take matters into his own hands, despite the risks this entails; relying on his special forces skills and training to run down the true murderer and uncover whatever conspiracy decided he needed to take a fall. Dodging bad-guys and bullets, this is the story of how he got even with those who betrayed him.

Andrew Grant has written a truly excellent thriller. That this is Grant's debut makes it all the more impressive; his plotting is expertly and perfectly paced, his characters are well-defined and realistic, and the antagonists are suitably sociopathic (Lesley, in particular, is psychopathic). David Trevellyan is one of the best new protagonists to come along since Mitch Rapp (Vince Flynn) or Mark Beamon (Kyle Mills): tough, cynical, gung-ho, sarcastic, and sometimes emotionally cold (to a frightening extent on the last page). The story is great – a classic tale of a lone wolf looking for revenge, with a modern and edgy twist that will keep you hooked until the surprising last paragraph. In fact, this is more like two stories – halfway through, it seems like the story could be wrapped up, but instead a new thread opens (slightly related to the first), and the action ratchets up again as the scope is broadened.

Even has the feel of the first two episodes of a TV series – one in which the main character could be described as the international equivalent of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher – it introduces us to the character, shows us his motivations and quite a bit of background detail (done at the beginning of every chapter as short asides, related to the coming events). If Even doesn’t set the author up for a long, successful career, then there is something very wrong in the world of publishing.

I would recommend you block out quite some time for starting this - it's impossible just to dip in and out; it’s highly likely that you will be swept up from the very beginning. Grant's writing style is fast and engaging, so you will be up late into the night.

Grant has introduced us to an excellent new hero, and can write a damn fine action thriller. In my opinion, this is better than Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series.

Very highly recommended.

For Fans of: Brett Battles, Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, Daniel Silva, Lee Child, Robert Ludlum, Ian Flemming, Charles Cumming