First of This Month’s Thrillers: The Watchman by Robert Crais
Spoilt rich girl Larkin Barkley crashes into another vehicle while out racing her sports car through the streets in the early hours of the morning. The occupants are not seriously injured, and one of the passengers hurries away from the scene on foot without saying anything. Larkin goes to help the others, but they drive off. Astonished, Larkin notes the car’s registration number and reports the incident. Shortly after, she is visited by two agents from the Department of Justice, who are very interested in her story.
Within a week, the first attempt is made on Larkin’s life.
Mercenary Joe Pike is persuaded to take the job of protecting Larkin, but the safe house he takes her to is attacked shortly after their arrival. Pike successfully shoots his way out, and he and the girl move base.
Pike tries to work out how the gunmen discovered their location so quickly, and why someone would want Larkin dead just for reporting a traffic accident. With help from colleagues, Pike eventually discovers who was in the car, and decides the only way to keep Larkin alive is to take the fight back to those involved.
More bodies fall as Pike starts to track down the man ultimately responsible. A meeting Pike arranges with someone linked to that person turns out to be a trap and Pike only just avoids being burnt alive. Slowly, though, Pike gets closer to the man behind the attempts on Larkin’s life and it becomes clear not everyone is who they seem.
Action and tension abound throughout the book. Scenes are well written, and Larkin’s and Pike’s characters come to life on the page. However, Crais does use a lot of American slang that I (as a Brit) didn’t understand. For me, that slightly spoilt the story because it kept jarring me out of the action; for some British readers it may be too much to bear. If it doesn’t bother you, then this is a great thriller packed with excitement that is well worth reading.
This Month’s Second Thriller: Ascension by Oliver Harris
Ascension is a modern-day spy thriller with an intriguing plot that gets increasingly more complex as the story unfolds. Action is mainly based on Ascension Island in the middle of the South Atlantic where Rory Bannatyne, a British spy, has died in an apparent suicide. He had been intercepting fibre optic cables that pass through the region, and MI5 sends Elliot Kane to the island to check there are no security concerns.
As Kane digs into what happened, he learns that Bannatyne may have had an unhealthy interest in some of the island’s teenagers. Worse, a girl who was seen talking with Bannatyne just before his death disappeared immediately afterwards. Are the events linked? Did he do something to her and then kill himself in remorse? If Bannatyne was responsible, it would have a massive impact on MI5 and their operations on the island.
One evening, Kane sees two men attacking a teenage boy and intervenes to stop him being seriously hurt. Kane is subsequently befriended by the boy’s parents, both of whom are US army personnel based on Ascension. It transpires that their son – Connor – was friends with the missing girl and many people blame him for her disappearance. He also knew Bannatyne and they often chatted. Not about anything in particular, he says; he was just a nice friendly chap.
Kane searches the isolated cottage where Bannatyne had lived and finds a hidden box containing an exercise book of Connor’s drawings. Why did Bannatyne have it and why was it hidden?
The story cuts between Kane’s investigations and those of his handler in London, Kathryn Taylor. She talks to Ballatyne’s sister in England and learns that he’d asked her to find out all she could about a certain doctor. But then she heard her brother was dead and did nothing with the request.
Taylor discovers that the doctor had a connection to Ascension Island and that he, too, died in an apparent suicide. Bannatyne’s death is looking more and more like it might be murder. She digs further and, as more facts are uncovered, the picture of what’s been happening on Ascension grows increasingly complex, especially when she identifies the involvement of Russian spies.
Back on Ascension, havoc breaks loose when another girl goes missing – best friend of the one who disappeared at Bannatyne’s death. Kane is arrested when the police find Connor’s exercise book in his possession. While waiting to be charged, Kane looks again through the book’s pictures and realises that one of them is of a building he now recognises. Tying it in with other things Connor had told him, Kane guesses this might be where the missing girl has gone. Kane escapes and heads there, hoping he can find her.
When Kane breaks into the building, the true implication of its role in events isn’t immediately obvious to him. However, Taylor, back in London, does now know enough to understand what’s going on, but someone is blocking all radio communication with Ascension and she cannot contact him to let him know the grave danger he is in.
It’s now a race against time, and Kane doesn’t realise the true picture of what’s been happening until near the end. The final chapter races onwards to an exciting climax.
The way the complexity of what’s been happening slowly increases all the way through the book is extremely well done, with each new uncovered fact adding a further dimension to the picture. The descriptions of the island are excellent and transport the reader there: you feel the jagged volcanic rocks beneath your feet and the heat beating down on your heard; you can sense the worry of the inhabitants for the missing girls. This is a thrilling espionage tale take that comes alive on the page.
This Month’s Third Thriller: Die Twice by Andrew Grant
David Trevelyan, a Royal Naval intelligence officer based in America, is assigned to a job in Chicago where he is to be handled out of the British Consulate by Richard Fothergil. One of Fothergil’s other agents – Tony McIntyre – has gone rouge, attempted to kill Fothergil and has now disappeared. The bigger problem is what he has taken with him: a canister of highly potent nerve gas originally stolen from the military and which McIntyre was meant to be recovering. It appears that McIntyre is now arranging to sell it to a small African country where a splinter group intends to use it on the population ahead of an upcoming election.
Trevelyan is sent to find McIntyre, his mission to recover the gas and to perform a “hard arrest” (i.e. to eliminate McIntyre).
McIntyre was injured during his attempt on Fothergil’s life and will need medical attention. London’s Intelligence Service provides the first lead when it discovers that McIntyre’s circle of friends and acquaintances includes a plastic surgeon. Trevelyan is sent to watch him in the hope he is secretly treating McIntyre, and when the surgeon makes an out-of-hours call to a dilapidated flat – clearly not the home of a private patient – it’s clear McIntyre has been found. Trevelyan questions the surgeon and forces him to return to the flat and to pretend he’s left something behind. When McIntyre opens the door, Trevelyan pounces. However, moments later, two gunmen appear and a gunfight ensues. The gunmen are killed but McIntyre escapes in the confusion.
Subsequent events make it clear the gunmen were there to kidnap McIntyre: another group knows about the stolen nerve gas and wants it themselves. The race is on for Trevelyan to find it first.
Much of the information used to track McIntyre comes from London’s Intelligence Service rather than from any investigation that Grant performs, with Grant often waiting for Fothergil to give him instructions on what to do next. Although this is probably true to real life, it does result in the plot feeling like a series of isolated action sequences. This may make the story less satisfying than it would be if we saw McIntyre investigating himself, but the increased realism counteracts this to some extent.
Many of the scenes are interspersed with flashbacks to Trevelyan’s training. While these are quite interesting, they’re only very loosely linked to what’s happening with the story and can become a distraction from the main storyline.
The novel’s climax becomes an exciting race-against-time when it’s learnt the gas has been planted and is primed for release.
The plot has no twists or turns except for one large one at the end. Unfortunately, though, it’s too well signposted to come as a surprise and is more of an inevitable occurrence than a twist.
Overall, Die Twice is a nicely written and exciting thriller with well composed action scenes. It’s great for those who read books for the action, but may not satisfy readers who like thrillers where the protagonist’s investigative skills are what propel the story forward.
From a Writer’s Desk
I’ve been buried under book edits since shortly before Christmas. My publisher finally returned edits from my second thriller, Backlash, while I was in the middle of doing a first round of edits on my work-in-progress thriller with a different editor. It was a bit confusing to be working on two books simultaneously, especially as I’d forgotten some scenes in Backlash because it’s been several years since it was written. Not many changes were required, though, which was nice to see. They used an American editor – which makes sense as the US is a bigger market than the UK – and it was a bit of an eye-opener to realise that a few words I had used in descriptions and some of the slang spoken by the characters were unknown to him or had a different meaning in The States. That’s been resolved by careful choice of alternative words, but it was an interesting lesson.
Ironically, I make that statement in a newsletter that carries a review of a US author’s book in which I complain about how much American slang he used! It had caused me, as a Brit, some difficulties: each strange unknown word I came across jarred me out of the action. It certainly shows that the differences between American and British English can be a larger gulf than one might imagine.
If you’ve got any stories about this problem, I’d love to hear them; just reply to my email.
Peak at a Blog: Plot Ideas for Thrillers
Where do thriller writers get their ideas from? This month’s blog looks at how a selection of authors answer that question: Lee Child, Val McDermid, David Baldachi, Ian Rankin, TM Logan, and others all describe what gives them the inspiration for the next thriller.
To find out, go to iancoatesthrillers.wordpress
Freebies & Competitions
For those of you living in the US, Penguin Random House is giving away a set of 9 thrillers by different authors. Just search “PRH Winter Mystery Thriller Giveaway”. The competition closes on Feb 14th.
For those of you in Great Britain, there’s a chance to get a copy of Tim Sulliavan’s latest DI Cross thriller. Just pop along to the lovereading website before Feb 19th and select “competitions” from the Resource links at the bottom of the page.