The Samaritan by Mason Cross

The Samaritan is the author’s second novel, his first, The Killing Season, being a runaway success. I haven't read the first book and as the sequel features the same main character, Carter Blake, I was a little apprehensive as to whether I would find it hard to pick up any relevant backstory. I needn't have worried, The Samaritan works as a standalone novel, though obviously it would be better to have read the first book. The author gives enough snippets of information for a new reader like me to understand the character and what he’s experienced in the past, without rehashing lots detail that might slow the plot.

Carter Blake is an interesting creation, a former special forces soldier who now searches for people who don’t want to be found. Early on in the novel you learn that he has a sense of ethics, refusing a job that might lead to the person he locates being killed. While the author doesn't go into too much detail about the special forces unit he was a part of (all we really learn is that it is completely off the books) it struck me that the author was inspired by the Intelligence Support Activity, a real life Pentagon unit that is shrouded in secrecy.

The story kicks off when one of his former colleagues, also a veteran of the above mentioned unit, and a man who always enjoyed killing just a little too much, begins murdering women in Los Angeles. His method is to abduct women whose cars have broken down on the freeway, torture and kill them. Carter Blake sees a news broadcast about the unsolved murders, recognises a feature of the case, and travels to Los Angeles to assist. The local police are of course suspicious of this outsider, but eventually one detective in particular embraces him.

As I mention above, the author’s first novel was a success and received overwhelmingly positive reviews; I imagine this second outing will receive the same. All of which means that I am likely to be the exception rather than the rule. It's not that I didn't enjoy this novel, I did, it kept me turning pages and coming back for more. But a thriller of this sort needs more if it's going to elevate itself above a mere airport novel, something to be quickly read and quickly forgotten. For me this doesn't reach those heady heights.

First off, the antagonist just doesn't ring true. Special forces and intelligence services psychologically screen their candidates and I'm just not convinced that someone as psychotic as the author portrays him to be would pass muster. Then there’s the whole serial killer thing. Personally I find deranged murderers slaughtering a succession of young women kind of tedious and with the odd exception – Silence of the Lambs, the movie Seven – I prefer my crime fiction to rely on something more. This was just another serial killing book, the victims reduced to carcasses, albeit with an interesting protagonist. And that brings me to Carter Blake himself. I like the people-finder specialist; it's an interesting role for a character. Unfortunately, however, the excellent author Tim Weaver has already done this much better, albeit with his character set in the UK and an ex-journalist rather than a spec ops guy. In comparison to Weaver’s David Raker, I just found Carter Blake a little one-dimensional.

In conclusion, this is a fast-paced roller coaster of a ride, lots of thrills and spills, lots action. It's a good book to read on the beach, by the pool, or to make that flight go a little faster. But will I be searching out Mason Cross’s previous books or any future outings for Carter Blake? Yeah, sure, it was fun. But there are other authors whose books I’ll be reading first.

I would give this book 3 out of 5 stars

The Spider in the Corner of the Room by Nikki Owen

The Spider in the Corner of the Room is an odd book. The basic plot is a Spanish female doctor, a plastic surgeon specialising in burns and reconstructive surgery and who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, wakes up in prison having been convicted of a murder she doesn’t recollect. So far so simple. But this is no linear novel and as with the Christopher Nolan movie Memento, events and the character’s unreliable recollections are fed to us in snatches. Just as with the Guy Pearce character in that great movie, we accompany our protagonist, Dr Maria Martinez, on her journey to reclaim her memories and thus discover the truth. Did she commit the terrible murder, and if so, why? Has she been framed? Who are the mysterious people in her past – the priest, the university lecturer – who appear to have honed her skills at problem solving? What did her beloved father know, and was he murdered because of this knowledge?

It’s a good premise and the author, Nikki Owen, pulls it all off with some panache. The trouble with such a novel that leaps from narrative place to place, timeframe to timeframe, is that the reader risks becoming confused and worn down by trying to keep up with it all. Throw in a conspiracy involving MI5 and a rogue Security Service sub-section and these risks are multiplied. I’m pleased to say that on the whole the author avoids these pitfalls and I remained gripped throughout. Dr Martinez’s Asperger’s is deftly handled as is her feelings of alienation as a foreigner in a British jail. There were a few times when I felt that the plot stretched credulity a little, especially when the author starts to explain the whole conspiracy aspect. But on the whole I thought this a thoroughly good read and such quibbles did little to spoil it for me.

The ending of The Spider in the Corner of the Room was left open, apparently this being the first in a trilogy. My only concern with this is whether Nikki Owen will be able to extend the conspiracy aspect of the story over the three books and whether the credulity straining I mentioned earlier will reach breaking point. That said I’m glad I got in on the beginning of the journey look forward to the rest of the ride.

I would give this 5 out of 5 stars

Gray Vengeance by Alan McDermott

Two words came to mind while reading this novel. The first was ‘bravura’, the second ‘chutzpah’. Why these particular words? We’ll come back to that, but the first thing to note about Gray Vengeance is that it is an unapologetically ambitious novel. It takes in a nationwide terror campaign, various rogue spooks and SAS people, political corruption, the NSA blanket surveillance controversy, tensions between the various intelligence services – both allied and domestic – and, and, and…You get the picture.

Now let’s step back a bit. A long time ago I bought the first three of Alan McDermott’s Tom Gray novels; if memory serves me right, they having been reduced in one of Amazon’s intermittent kindle book sales. I never got round to reading them, although I kept meaning to: they’re the kind of books I like to read and the cover art is exceptional. Fast forward to now and I’m reviewing books for this blog and what should pop up on Netgalley? You guessed it, the next Tom Gray novel. Gray Vengeance is number five in the series and I have numbers 1-3 –which as I say I haven’t read – so what to do? After a bit of indecision, I thought ‘What the hell?’ and requested book 5.

All I can say is ‘Wow’!

Now the danger with having so many plates spinning in the air of one’s plot at any one time is that one or all might come smashing to the ground. Or they might become entangled and make a mess (can plates become entangled? Probably not, but you get where I’m coming from). Or you just lose track of which plate is which or what the hell it all amounts to. And this is where those two words at the start of the first paragraph come in, because the author doesn’t allow any of that to happen. It takes a certain ballsy-ness to write a big over-arching conspiracy thriller like this, one has to just go for it without hesitation. If the reader feels just a tremor of doubt then the whole thing falls apart. I’ve never met the author, Alan McDermott, but I can say one thing with assurance: he’s got b***. If he had any doubts in his story when writing it, it doesn’t show. Instead it just belts along at a frenetic pace, taking the reader with it.

Now sure, I have a couple of little niggles. It would be a surprise in a book with so many strands to its plot if I didn’t. For a start, near the very beginning the terrorists recruit a bunch of anarchists to fly to Nigeria for training so that they can participate in a nationwide bombing plot. Other than knowing that the group that they’re a part of is very radical in what it espouses, the terrorists don’t really do any vetting of these guys. In fact when they make their initial approach it’s revealed that until now all the anarchists have done is a bit of graffiti and criminal damage. Would a sophisticated terror organisation really risk everything on a punt like this? Perhaps more seriously, when the bombing campaign begins the power grid is seriously disrupted. But it’s also explained that the terrorists don’t really want to bring down the internet or the phone network because they want to communicate with their cells. Fair enough. But the author seems to want his cake and eat it: on the one hand he wants the power to much of the country out so that rioting and disruption can occur, but on the other hand he wants his heroes to be able to use the NSA super system, hacking, all the other 21^st century spy geekery that a modern spy thriller enjoys. But hang on a minute; wouldn’t the power going down, even if in just parts of the country, affect the internet and the telecommunications system? In an interlinked world, servers going down in one place can seriously affect the whole system. This circle is never satisfactorily closed.

There are a couple of other issues I have which I can’t really describe for fear of giving away a spoiler, though as with the above two mentioned, they’re minor niggles which in no way spoiled my enjoyment of an otherwise excellent book. I have to say that I’m now itching to read the previous three that I have sitting on my Kindle, oh and I’ll have to buy number four, and then he’ll bring out a number six…

In conclusion I want to give this book four out of five stars, there are some flaws in the plot – however minor – as outline above. But the sheer panache with which it was written bumps it up to five-star read, so there you go.

I would give this book 5 out of 5 stars

The Shape of Shit to Come

I picked this up as I have a great interest in the near future, in how technology will take us in the next two hundred years or so. I’ve been greatly impressed with the work of authors like Michio Kaku, whose works Physics of the Future and Physics of the Impossible, look at just this from a serious scientific point of view (Mr Kaku being an astrophysicist).

The Shape of Shit to Come promised to deliver just such a read, albeit in a more satirical and comedic sense. In many ways it did just that.  Covering topics such as genetics, robotics, and space travel to name just a few, and doing so in an amusing and easy to understand manner, I definitely felt that I came away from the read enriched and educated. Sometimes I did feel that the authors tried a little too hard to be funny however and occasionally I felt that the sarcasm and humour got in the way of a real understanding of the issue at hand. Whereas their irreverence ensured that they avoided the pitfalls Micio Kaku occasionally falls into – e.g. a wide-eyed, innocence where the technology is concerned that leads him to conclude that the outcome will be some kind of perfect nirvana – on occasion it leads them to the other extreme.

One the whole though, while I prefer Michio Kaku’s work I have to say that The Shape of Shit to Come is a valuable addition to the cannon of furturism work and I would highly recommend it.

I would give it 5 out of 5 stars.

Close Quarters by Adrian Magson

This is only the second Adrian Magson novel I’ve read. Along time ago I read his novel Red Station, the first of his Harry Tate series, but wasn’t massively impressed. It wasn’t that it was a bad novel, just a little slow for a spy thriller. Recently NetGalley hosted Close Quarters, the second in his Marc Portman series, and I opted to give it ago. I have to say that I’m glad that I did.

Close Quarters is incredibly current, set in the on-going conflict between Russian separatists and the Ukrainian Government. The story revolves around Marc Portman, an ex-special forces contractor who specialises in protecting people from afar, being brought in by the CIA to rescue a State Department diplomat who’s under ‘house arrest’ in a hotel in eastern Ukraine. Needles to say, if it were that easy this would be a very short novel indeed. Instead, for reasons I won’t share for risk of divulging spoilers, the plan goes seriously awry.

I do have a couple of issues but they all centre on the same thing. Throughout the book our hero runs into Spetsnaz troops, basically Russia’s equivalent to the SAS. Yet he never seems to have any trouble dispatching them. In one scene, after the armoured truck the Spetsnaz are in crashes into a lake, he drags two of them out and ties them together by their thumbs. And that’s it, job done! I’m sorry; these are either elite special forces or they aren’t. Similarly, after subduing a female sniper (again hardened ex-army) she sits meekly by while he shoots her colleague in a gunfight. She doesn’t try to escape or overpower him when his back is turned or anything.

But these are minor issues in an otherwise good, solid, and gripping thriller. Close Quarters is an action packed thrill of a ride. It’s fast paced and kept me swiping along (I read it on Kindle) at a merry old rate. It would be true to say that I found it hard to put down and read it in two days. The Ukraine is nicely brought to life as a location and the author has clearly researched some tradecraft, referring to agent running, etc. I liked the topicality of the plot, I liked Marc Portman as a character, and I would definitely read more of this series.

I would give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Hidden, the blog tour. My review.

Emma Kavanagh has written a gripping psychological thriller in Hidden. I haven’t read her first novel Fallen, but I might have to having read this. It’s one of the perils of being a book reviewer: a publisher let’s you have an advance of a new novel, only for you to discover an author you had never read before, with a canon of work to their name. You now find yourself compelled to catch up on their earlier work, cue lots of purchases on Amazon and an ever-lengthening To Read List.

But I digress, back to Hidden. The novel revolves around an unidentified gunman stalking a local hospital. The local community, patients, their relatives, the hospital staff, are all left fearful. One of the strengths of the book is just how well the author gets across this atmosphere of restrained tension. There’s a real Britishness about how nobody wants to make a fuss, everyone stoically attempting to get on with things. But of course they can never quite escape the palpable air of menace.

To this backdrop we are introduced to a broad set of characters, many not entirely sympathetic, a few quite loathsome. Some are related to each other, others friends or work colleagues, but they’re all products of the local community and another strength of the book is how the author conveys a sense of small town life, how everyone knows everyone else or is one degree of separation away.

In some ways this novel was almost a family drama, the narrative focusing more on the tensions between the characters’ lives than the stalking gunman. In fact the stress of their situation draws these tensions into sharp relief and it’s not long until we’re getting a glimpse behind the curtain, the dirty washing if you will, the skeletons in people’s cupboards revealed to the reader in all their unedifying glory.

The author does a good job of setting up red herrings as to the identity of the gunman and twice I thought I knew who it was only to be proven completely wrong. The downside of this is that when the true antagonist was revealed, I felt that not quite enough had been done to prepare their backstory so that I would be convinced of their motivation. But this is a relatively minor quibble.

The only other issue I have is once again a small one. Whenever the author wants to get across that a character is feeling nervous or upset, she has their stomach lurch in some way. The result is that all the characters end up feeling anxiety in a curiously uniform manner. I lost count of the amount of stomach turns, somersaults, lurches and other variations that were described. Again this is a minor point and in no way spoiled the enjoyment of the novel for me but I did find myself noticing it.

Overall this is an accomplished novel that keeps you guessing until the end and I have no hesitation in recommending it. 

I would give this 5 out of 5 stars      

Hidden, the blog Tour. Police shootings and the Psychology of Threat Assessment

I am pleased today to be taking part in the blog tour for Emma Kavanagh's new novel Hidden. Emma has an impressive resume. A PhD in psychology and a career as a police and military psychologist, she's trained armed police officers, military personnel and command staff how to react in stressful and high pressured situations. Hidden is the literary result of this wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience.

The blurb reads as follows:

HE'S WATCHING

A gunman is stalking the wards of a local hospital. He's unidentified and dangerous, and has to be located. Urgently. 

Police Firearms Officer Aden McCarthy is tasked with tracking him down. Still troubled by the shooting of a schoolboy, Aden is determined to make amends by finding the gunman - before it's too late.

SHE'S WAITING

To psychologist Imogen, hospital should be a place of healing and safety - both for her, and her young niece who's been recently admitted. She's heard about the gunman, but he has little to do with her. Or has he?

As time ticks down, no one knows who the gunman's next target will be. But he's there. Hiding in plain sight. Far closer than anyone thinks...

So over to Emma for this insight into police shootings and in particular the issue of Threat Perception.

Psychology of Police Shootings - Threat Perception

The world of the firearms police officer is a fast moving one that can demand swift judgements made in less than ideal circumstances. Those judgements, made in the heat of the moment, will go on to be scrutinised for months, often years to come. If the choice the officer made - to shoot or not to shoot - proves to be the correct one, they will often still face a barrage of media and public criticism. If it proves to be incorrect, they may face prison. 

In Hidden, Aden has been faced with a choice. Should he shoot? For him, unlike others, the answer was no, and the repercussions of that decision have haunted him. 

So what makes some firearms officers see danger where others do not? 

The first thing that we have to understand is the speed of these situations, the challenge that puts on our mental processes. An incident can go from standard to critical within the space of seconds. That means that the officer’s mental processing has to work just as fast. 

In order to achieve this, a number of things happen to the cognitive processes of the officer. Their ability to think critically and rationally has been reduced by the stress response. Instead they are relying on past experiences and training to guide them. They will use mental shortcuts, relying on what they already know about the world to understand the threat that is posed. Does this person look dangerous? Can I see an obvious weapon? They will use stereotypes, information that they already have. This is all well and good when the perpetrator is as they appear to be. However, research has shown that in critical incidents in which the threat came from a woman, officers were more likely to fail to shoot, such scenarios being more likely to result in officer death. 

When a suspect has a history of carrying a firearm, the officer tasked with responding to them in a high stress situation will be going in with a certain expectation, a higher sense of the danger posed to their own life. That means that their perceptions will be skewed towards the detection of a gun. Our perceptions are not perfect. Sometimes we see what we think we are going to see. And in some of these cases, this can result in an office pulling the trigger in the full belief that they are being faced with a weapon when they are not. 

Identifying small features - is that a real gun or a toy gun? - becomes next to impossible in the time frames involved. Live fire exercises have shown that the best of officers will struggle to make such distinctions, even when their lives are not in danger. Imagine how much more difficult these identifications become when the officer is in a real life critical incident. 

The decisions firearms officers make happen quickly, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the rain, usually when their stress response is high. In the huge majority of situations, these highly trained officers get it right, a testament to their skill and their ability to remain calm when faced with imminent danger.