The Englishman by David Gilman

When Jeremy Carter, a 49-year-old banker is ambushed in his car, his driver murdered by men with assault rifles in an ambush in London, his boss at MI6 (who he once officially worked for, and still does unofficially) wants someone off-the-books to help him investigate. Enter Dan Raglan, the Englishman of the title, a former French Foreign Legionnaire and a man who has worked for both French and British intelligence since. Raglan sets about investigating, his familial relationship with Carter spurring him on. Soon, he finds himself up to his ears in international intrigue and espionage.  

I shan’t give too much away about the plot, but this is a good, solid, high-octane spy thriller. The blurb on the back gives it away that at some point Raglan will need to sneak into a penal colony deep in the snowy wastes of Siberia, a near-impossible mission. But this happens towards the end of the book, and in actual fact, I found the body of the plot, which occurs in London, far more compelling.

This a novel that fits into that muscular genre of action/espionage, more Lee Child, Vince Flynn, or Stephen Leather than John Le Carre. There’s enough here to make it stand out from the crowd, it’s well-plotted and the characterisation is good, but I did find the odd irritating flourish of cliché. Am I the only one who finds the femme fatale a little tiresome? Why does the action hero have to fall into bed with a female colleague? Is this just a convention that thriller readers on the whole expect, and are my complaints just me being a little stuffy?

That said, this is a small flaw - and as mentioned, it might be just me who sees it as such - in an otherwise well crafted and enjoyable novel. One thing I did like about the novel, is that people you don’t expect to die, do. This is something that Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones excelled at and elevated them above the competition: never knowing whether a cherished character might get killed does wonders for the tension. I won't give anything away, but there are a couple of times in this novel when a character who you think won't end up on a mortuary slab, does, in fact, do so. The author is certainly not scared to kill his darlings, always a good thing with a thriller writer.

The Englishman holds its own in a crowded field and I certainly hope that there’s a sequel. The characters left standing at the end could certainly carry one.

4 out of 5 stars

Eden by Tim Lebbon

With climate change kicking in with a vengeance, sea levels rising, virgin forest such as the Amazon all but destroyed, great islands of plastic refuse floating in the oceans and countless species on the brink of extinction, humanity must take drastic action. So it is that global consent is sought and obtained to set aside Virgin Zones, areas of the planet given back to nature where people are banished from stepping foot. These zones are guarded by an international force of ex-soldiers and mercenaries and while many cases of abuse occur, the world can’t but persevere with the project. 

As with the Chernobyl exclusion zone after the disaster of 1986, the Virgin Zones flourish without people, nature returning ascendant. Again, like Chernobyl, while people aren’t supposed to enter them, they do. It isn't long before a small underground develops of extreme adventurers willing to risk the armed guards to explore inside.

Eden is the oldest of the zones and it is also the wildest. When Dylan leads his tight-knit team of adrenalin seekers, that includes his daughter, Jenn, into the zone, they think that they’re up to the challenge. What they don’t realise is that Eden itself doesn’t want them.

This is an eco-horror with a slight supernatural bent. At one point a character mentions a piece of Jewish folklore. All of creation had been completed, except one corner. God began to create it, but left it unfinished, saying, “Whoever declares himself to be God, let him come and finish this corner, and then all shall know he is a god.” There, in that unfinished corner, demons, winds, earthquakes, and evil spirits dwell. It’s a myth that sums up Eden for where people once did live in the Virgin Zone since it’s abandonment something has emerged and it’s not entirely clear what it is or where it came from. 

I won’t give away much more of the plot, but this is an excellent and very current novel of our times. With people increasingly aware of the impact that we are having on the environment and the climate crisis, there is a sense, rightly or wrongly, that the ecosystem is turning against us. 

While I mainly read crime fiction, I’ve always read a bit of horror, but since coronavirus and lockdown, I’ve started to turn to the genre more and more. I’m not sure why this is, but there is a horror resurgence at the moment, though whether this just coincidentally coincides with Covid-19, I can’t say. Either way, this is my first Tim Lebbon novel, but it will definitely not be my last. 

Creepy and scary, this is an excellent read.

5 out of 5 stars

Sword by Bogdan Teodorescu

A serial killer is roaming Romania, cutting his victims’ throats with a sword. All his victims have two things in common: they’re from the much-maligned Roma community, an ethnic group that has suffered much prejudice and continues to do so, and they’re all criminals. Sword, as the press unimaginatively dub the killer, soon polarises the country, with some ethnic Romanians cheering the killer's targeting of Roma. Soon, the country’s ethnic divisions are laid bare.

This is a novel with a huge cast of characters and a huge span: the narrative stretches from Sword’s victims, through the police who are tasked with catching him, the intelligence agencies who monitor the simmering ethnic tensions and the national security situation that this endangers, politicians of all stripes who use the murders to jostle for position, and finally to the President, Prime Minister and cabinet ministers.

This is much more than a crime novel and is rather a political and social commentary, the Sword killings a catalyst through which to study the rifts that lie at the heart of Romanian society. The author is a former Romanian journalist himself and even served as Acting Minister in the nation’s Department of Public Information from  1996 to 1997. So he knows a thing or two about Romanian society and the picture that he paints is not a complimentary one. Quite the reverse, in fact. 

This book is eye-opening as to the sheer corruption that it paints. Journalists and television hosts actively seek pay-offs for portraying politicians in a good light, something that the latter are all too happy to oblige them with. If a media figure then doesn’t pull the line, the politician bitterly complains and seeks revenge. Racial tensions are stark also. While poverty and the sense that since the fall of communism the country has ground to a halt as far as progress and living standards are concerned is palpable.

This book works well on these levels but unfortunately, it tries to say too much and the narrative buckles under the weight of its cast of characters, all of whom struggle for the limelight. As for Sword him or herself? The serial killer disappears from the story for much of the book, and while on one level this doesn’t matter, the serial killings are just the spark to light the touch paper of tension, after all, one can't escape the fact that it’s precisely when the killer leaves the picture that the book starts to drift.

3 out of 5 stars

Die Alone by Simon Kernick

This is the third in Kernick’s Bone Field trilogy, coming after the titular The Bone Field and its sequel The Hanged Man. While this book could be read on its own, I would highly recommend reading the previous two titles to get the most enjoyment from it.

The series focuses on a group of powerful and corrupt men who have children and adults - mostly vulnerable and easily missed, but not always - kidnapped to order so that they may be tortured and murdered for their sadistic pleasure. The three novels trace the unravelling of this network and the efforts of two disgraced former police officers - Ray Mason and Tina Boyd (Ray is a serving officer in the first novel, and disgraced by the third) - to solve the crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. 

Alastair Sheridan, one of those guilty of the offences is a wealthy city fund manager, and by this novel, he’s entered politics and is on the cusp of becoming Prime Minister. Cem Kalaman, the other remaining conspirator, is the head of a powerful organised crime syndicate. Sheridan, in particular, is determined to stop the investigations into him once and for all, his fellow perpetrators having been killed, the bodies of victims having been discovered, and it all reaches a crescendo in this final instalment.

Simon Kernick is a versatile crime writer and with this series, I feel that he’s moved into quite gothic territory. There’s a real dark feel to these novels and it’s not just the horrendous crimes that the criminals have committed (which are never described in gratuitous detail) but rather the intersection between powerful men and the almost satanic cult that they’re a part of, and the near invulnerability that their wealth and power bring to them. It makes for a gripping trilogy and Die Alone is a suitable finish to it.

4 out of 5 stars