Tag: novel

Evangeline: Memoir of a Teenage Serial Killer, by KC Franks

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

When I see “Reader discretion is advised,” on an Amazon page, I tend to take it with a grain of salt. I’ve been enjoying media at the outer edges for longer than most readers here have been alive, and so am not easily shocked, disturbed or offended, to put it mildly. I’m ussure this quite managed to do any of those, but I will definitely say this: yes, reader discretion is advised. This is a rough, nasty and often unpleasant read. But it’s dealing with rough, nasty and often unpleasant topics, so the approach is entirely in keeping with the subject matter and not inappropriate.

The “heroine” – and I use quotes advisedly – is Angeline Gottschalk, a teenage girl who lives in rural Nebraska and has a truly unfortunate life. Her mother is mentally ill, she’s bullied at high school (in part due to having a stutter), and her stepfather, a local deputy sheriff, has bee abusing Angeline in the most vile ways imaginable since she was aged eleven. Eventually, Angeline’s psyche snapped, and split off an alternate personality as a way of handling the abuse – basically, acting as her psychological stunt double. Evangeline, as the other part of Angeline is named, calls herself “Defender of the weak. Champion of the abused. Bold. Fearless. And extremely pissed-off.” But the title of the book is arguably more accurate: serial killer. 

Oh, her targets are more than a little Dexter-like, to be sure – beginning with the stepfather, who will not be abusing anyone, ever again. But Evangeline then decides to target the deserving, in her mind, sex offenders who live in the local area. Rather than just being a stand-in for Angeline in the darkest hours, she begins to act independently, setting up a conflict between the two personas, which only one can win. For Angeline wants nothing more than to be left alone – ideally with her crush, Caleb Quinn. Except, Caleb’s brother, Billy is one of her biggest tormentors, and he has friends whose intentions and actions a) are even worse, and b) make them prime targets for Evangeline’s brutal methods of summary justice.

As you can perhaps guess, it’s all going to get very messy, both in the emotional and blood-spattered senses. The writing style feels a little rough and ready, almost bordering on the literary version of torture porn in some scenes. Franks tears into the violence with much the same glee that Evangeline tears into her victims: male readers may find themselves crossing their legs uncomfortably from time to time. There’s a near-total lack of empathetic characters in this: even Angeline is little more than a human piñata for life’s torments. Still, it’s sometimes good to peer over the edge into the abyss of humanity’s darkest depths, and this book certainly delivers on that. A stand-alone novel is fine. Any concept of a series here would not be something of interest.

Author: KC Franks
Publisher: Seven Crows Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Stand-alone novel.

Tentacles and Teeth, by Ariele Sieling

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

I was disappointed by the lack of tentacles. However, there were certainly no shortage of teeth in this post-apocalyptic tale, which takes place decades after the arrival of monsters, from an uncertain source, has led to the collapse of civilization on Earth. The survivors are left to scratch out a fragile existence, trying to dodge the many kinds of lethal new fauna which inhabit the landscape. Askari is a young woman who forms part of one such nomadic group, but finds herself increasingly questioning the strict rules by which they operate. As punishment for breaking these laws, is sent by elders of her tribe on a hazardous mission into a long-abandoned urban area.

Fortunately, she’s not alone, with allies human and animal. Even with these on her side, there are any number of lethal hazards to be faced, fought or avoided. There are also lessons to be learned, both about survival and her own heritage. When she re-unites with her group, they find themselves trapped in a cave network, possessing an unpleasant sitting tenant. Once that is disposed of, the only way out is through a pitched battle against multiple packs of rarohan, carnivorous creatures the size of horses, capable of ripping a full-grown man to shreds in seconds. Survival is possible, but what might the cost be, and are they willing to pay it?

Despite any deficiencies on the tenticular department, I liked the world-building here, which is likely the strongest element. There’s just enough information given about things became this way, that it doesn’t seem a fait accompli, and it feels like the author has a whole bestiary of weird and wonderful creations in her locker, ready to drop on Askari, as and when necessary. Getting rid of them, on the other hand, is a little less convincing, and is where Sieling struggles most. It’s a combination of questionable evolution – turns out the rarohan have a button on their backs which basically makes them explode – and too convenient contrivance, such as the fully-functioning gun one character suddenly pulls out of thin air. This weakens Askari significantly as a lead character.

It’s something of a shame, since she has many admirable attributes, being smart, inquisitive and in particular, having a questioning nature. She doesn’t accept that “the science is settled,” for example, in the blanket labelling of all monsters as bad. While this can certainly put her in needless peril, the knowledge gained seems likely to help both her and her group in the longer term. Sieling does a good job of telling a complete story here: while the ending clearly opens the door towards further adventures for Askari, it’s not a cliff-hanger, and should leave you feeling satisfied. I might not be willing to pay full price for further entries in the series, yet if I was to see a special offer or collection of them, I could be tempted into a purchase. Let’s just hope the tentacles show up…

Author: Ariele Sieling
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the Land of Szornyek series.

Girl On The Golden Elephant, by Richter Watkins

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆
a.k.a. Lethal Redemption

War correspondent Kiera Hunter goes out of her comfort zone, to try and solve a decades-old mystery related to her grandfather. He was a CIA pilot, on one of the last planes to get out of Saigon in 1975, but it crashed deep in the Laotian jungle, carrying a statue of deep iconic significance to the locals. This depicted legendary freedom fighter Trưng Trắc on an elephant, which will be significant later. After the death of her gramps, Kiera finds papers describing the location of the crash, and heads to the area to try and locate it. There she teams up with guide Porter Vale, but there are other, envious eyes after the cargo, and prepared to go to any lengths to obtain it.

This is… alright, I suppose. To be honest, for someone who is allegedly used to operating in the most perilous of environments, Kiera comes over as quite naive and, especially in the early going, almost painfully dependent on Porter. I get it’s perhaps not her usual theatre of operations, and it’s wise to defer to somebody with local knowledge. However, the basic rules of operation are no different in the Middle East and the Far East. For much of the first half, this feels more like The Adventures of Porter Vale, and his tagalong sidekick. The other issue was one of the main villains being called… Luc Besson. Yeah. Somebody really didn’t like Angel-A.

Once Porter and Kiera cross the border into Laos, things do improve. Her free-climbing skills prove critical in the expedition reaching the plateau where the plane can be found. After they come under attack by Besson’s men, it’s also up to her to make her way back to the encampment of the local Hmong people. This is no easy matter, and nor is convincing them of the need to help. Fortunately the spirit of Trưng Trắc is there to lend a helping hand (told you it would be significant!). This isn’t as cheesy as it sounds, and is written with enough conviction to sell the concept. Although more liberal readers will perhaps snort something derisive about cultural appropriation, and the whole endeavour being an example of White Saviour Complex.

Personally, I’m more concerned with writing which seems to have a much better sense of location than character. Watkins does a decent job of capturing the colour of the settings, such as the frenetic urban pace of Saigon. This is in sharp contrast to the rural wilderness into which Keira is dropped, more or less literally. The people who inhabit it are considerably more thinly-sketched: Porter in particular never gets past being the square-jawed hero of a comic strip. He and Keira never have the chemistry necessary for the relationship depicted on the page, which fizzles when it needs to sizzle. I’m also disappointed Besson never got his butt kicked by the heroine. Surely that would have been the only appropriate fate to befall him.

Author: Richter Watkins
Publisher: Pryde Multimedia, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
A stand-alone novel.

Saving Karma, by Reid Bracken

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

On Amazon, this is subtitled, “A full-throttle Thailand thriller,” but that’s a little bit of a misleading label. The bulk of the story – at least, the bits that matter – actually take place in China. The book itself goes with “A full-throttle thriller throughout Asia,” Except it starts off in the not-exactly Asian setting of San Bernardino, California, where Bree Thomas is just about to graduate. This is despite the problems of her adopted family, who she was sent to live with after her parents were killed in Thailand. She gets a chance to escape it all, in the form of an apprentice program with the Meng Foundation, a charitable group who help refugees around the world.

Of course, it’s not as simple or easy as it seems. The apprenticeship requires an extremely harsh training regime in the Asian jungle, which really puts Bree through the wringer, though she bonds with another recruit, Japanese girl Nikko. When they come out the other side, they begin the work, including liberating people who are basically slave labourers in a Burmese jade mine. They are then given new lives in an isolated city, New Lingyang, which the Meng Foundation has taken over in the heart of China. Except Bree gradually comes to realize that it’s not the charitable endeavour it initially appears, and there’s a very unpleasant underlying agenda at work.

This started out on shaky ground, with the early stages a shallow portrayal of Bree as little more than a victim. However, once the story took her out of the conventional high-school setting, she becomes a more laudable character, and things improve considerably. There are a few elements which did stretch plausibility too far for my tastes. I really cannot see the CIA director getting her hands dirty in quite the way described here, taking part directly in actions which would never pass congressional oversight: “plausible deniability” is an actual thing. And Bree’s method of escape from the final peril… Well, let’s just say my thoughts echoed those of a character who exclaimed, “Are you fucking kidding me?” on seeing it.

If you can get over those hurdles and accept the premise, you’ll find a solid enough story. It really accelerates in the second half, becoming almost non-stop as Bree figures out the truth behind New Lingyang, and goes on a near-suicide mission to stop it. I also appreciated the irony that she is using skills the Meng Foundation taught her, as well as their resources, in order to take them down. The book does end on a revelation that had me going “Eh?” as much as anything: it doesn’t make much sense at this point. This was clearly intended as an opener for a series, but so far, is the only book by the author – the sequel was supposed to be released in “early 2021”. Maybe we should blame COVID. After all, the Chinese authorities aren’t exactly portrayed very favourably here…

Author: Reid Bracken
Publisher: Independently published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book

Save The Girls, by Terry Toler

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

I think I can point almost to the exact point where this one jumped the shark. It had started well enough. Jamie Austen works for the CIA, taking down human traffickers across the world, in conjunction with a non-governmental organization called Save the Girls. Now, I have questions here: why exactly would the CIA care about this, unless American citizens were involved – either as victims or perpetrators? They are not exactly a charitable group, and while certainly a laudable goal, fighting sex trafficking is not generally in their remit. But that aside, Jamie is sent into Belarus to investigate a large ring – moving up to 300 women a month to Russia and Turkey – whose proceeds could be funding terrorism. Ah, that makes more sense.

From the start, the mission begins to go wrong. A local gang try to mug her on the way to meet her contact. While she disposes of them, it causes her to miss the meeting, and also puts her firmly on the radar of the local cops, hampering her future investigation. This forces Jamie into making use of her resourcefulness, in order to make things happen, and following her as she peels away the layers of the onion – for the corruption here goes all the way to the top in Belarus – is interesting stuff. The first misstep is a twist, which brings an unexpected character into play. It stretches credibility heavily, and to a certain extent turns Jamie into a “damsel in distress”, reliant on external help.

A bigger misstep follows. They discover the man behind the ring is also looking to acquire a suitcase-sized nuke, and hold America to ransom. These nukes are held in a nuclear waste management facility, but Toler basically bypasses the entire issue of how Jamie and her colleague recover them. Skips right over it. It’s something to do with using a pass belonging to the Belarus Minister of Transportation. But what you feel should be the action highlight of the book, is basically hand-waved away as a nothing burger. After that, I just could not find it in myself to care about the rest of the story.

The story does continue on for another seventy-five pages or so after this point, with Jamie peeling off on a solo mission to rescue literally thousands of captive women, single-handed. She’s so damn good at whatever she does, you wonder why the CIA is wasting her on freeing foreign nationals. Add in some sloppily-constructed romance, and the overall result is a clearly well intentioned, yet ultimately unsatisfying read. This is a pity, as the first half, despite some qualms, made for decent entertainment, and Toler manages to convey the “exotic” location of the Belarus capital, Minsk, making it come alive. The Cat Museum mentioned in passing is, apparently, a real thing. His narrative: not so much.

Author: Terry Toler
Publisher: Beholdings Publishing, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 12 in the Jamie Austin Thrillers series.

The Blind Spot, by Michael Robertson

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Literary rating: ★★½
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆½

On the surface, Scala City is an idyllic, hi-tech world of prosperity, peace and morality, albeit at the cost of omnipresent surveillance of its residents. But there’s a dirty little secret. The Blind Spot is an area where surveillance is barred, and where the citizens of Scala City go to blow off their sordid steam. Its residents have cybernetically enhanced bodies, something rejected by Scala City, and a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of monitoring. It’s run by Wrench, who has kept his daughter Marcie Hugo under strict control since the death of her mother. However, like all teenagers, the 16-year-old Marcie is seeking to spread her wings, and has been making covert excursions into Scala City, with the aim of moving there some day soon.

The problem is, an escalating series of terrorist attacks have been occurring in the city, which it appears someone is trying to blame on the Blind Spot, in order to trigger a war between them and the city. After one of Marcie’s trips is caught on camera, the heat gets turned up, and she – along with the Blind Spot’s most infamous computer hacker – becomes the only person who can prevent a conflict that could lead to the destruction (at least in a digital sense) of both sides. She believes the perpetrators may have help from inside the Blind Spot, suspecting in particular a close accomplice of Wrench, who also happens to be the father of her best friend.

The world-building here is solid enough. As well as Marcie, events unfold through the sad eyes of Nick, an overweight and largely unloved Scala City resident. He’s addicted to the Wellbeing App, which records only the positive things people say about each other, sharing it with them. This is…scarily plausible, to be honest, though the split focus is a little unwieldy. No connection between this pair of story lines is established until about two-thirds of the way through the book, although they work well enough on their own terms. The idea of a city with a Jekyll and Hyde personality is also well-executed.

A bigger problem, for me, was the sudden reticence on Marcie’s end. Initially, we experience things through her eyes, knowing everything she knows. Then, at a certain point, we get cut out of the loop, from a narrative point of view, as she and her hacker pal begin their plot to track down and expose the real terrorists. We’re left on the outside, not knowing what’s going on – and when we do find out, there naturally being a grand reveal, it’s not very satisfying. It relies too much on the “all-powerful hacker” trope, and the identity of the traitor in their midst is also unconvincing. The story ends up being a swing and a miss, though with the book being free on Amazon, I probably can’t complain. Though it’d have to be at the same price point to get me to go any further into the series.

Author: Michael Robertson
Publisher: Self-published, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 6 in the Neon Horizon series.

The Watcher, by Matthew Hattersley

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Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆½

Somebody really liked Killing Eve… If you’re going to write a story about an amoral female assassin, working for a shadowy group, who becomes involved with a woman she’s supposed to kill, then you are basically inviting such comparisons. These are unlikely to be favourable to your work. I’m just sayin’. This started off okay: however, a single sentence at the 46% mark was basically a large neon sign as to how this was going to end, and proved exactly the case, as this collapsed in a slew of implausibility. Now, I’m not a trained assassin, so can’t comment on those elements. However, I do work in IT, and it’s clear the author does not. For instance, if someone was to leave our company on bad terms, their access would be immediately removed, as a top priority, so they couldn’t… oh, waltz in thereafter and download all our highly sensitive data. Sheesh.

Anyway, back on the amoral female assassin front, we have “Acid Vanilla”, the operational name of a killer working for private company Annihilation Pest Control. They’ve been contracted to tidy up after an executive of tech company Cerberix was seen  strangling a hooker. The employee who witnessed it, Spook Horowitz, and footage of the murder, both have to be disposed of. However, Acid is already teetering on the edge of burnout, and when her target informs her about the realities of the case, the hitwoman decides she is on the wrong side. She and Spook set out to take down Cerberix. This means her boss at APC will send a steady stream of other employees in their direction, in an effort to cover up the widening mess this contract is causing. It needs to be cleared up before Cerberix’s upcoming and much-ballyhoed announcement of their new venture, due to be live streamed across the globe in a few days.

Yeah, if you can’t tell the eventual direction, I don’t know what to say, and Horowitz has to be the least convincing depiction of a “hacker” I’ve ever read. Neither her, nor the relationship with Acid, are credible, and the further the book goes on, the more these elements take centre-stage. It’s a shame, since Vanilla herself is a decent character: the child of trauma, inevitably, yet not a pure psychopath either, and with significant mommy issues, let’s just say. Particularly as a first book, Hattersley should have stuck to establishing her, rather than bringing in the Jiminy Cricket-like character of Horowitz, who can also get whatever information is required by the plot with a couple of mouse-clicks. There’s no shortage of action, to be sure, although it felt almost like a running joke the way Acid inevitably took out the bad guys with head-shots (so many skulls exploding like ripe fruit…), while they only ever aimed at her and Spook’s bodies. Definitely one of the more baffling 4.25-star ratings on Goodreads.

Author: Matthew Hattersley
Publisher: Boom Boom Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the Acid Vanilla series.

Assassin’s Vow, by David Bruns and J. R. Olson

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆☆

Bruns and Olson are retired U.S. Navy officers, Olson in particular with a background in naval intelligence –and that background is drawn on heavily in the various self-published series that he and Bruns co-write. This particular 117-page novella exists only in an electronic edition; in keeping with my usual practice, I’d never have read it, but for the fact that it’s a freebie. Supposedly, it’s the fourth in a succession of “Standalone Suspenseful Short Reads.” In fact, although I read it as a standalone, it actually ties directly into The Pandora Deception, the fourth novel in the authors’ WMD Files series. (The first novel of that series is premised on the conceit that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein really did have his infamous “weapons of mass destruction,” but cleverly smuggled them out of Iraq before the Americans closed in – okay, this IS fiction.) Our protagonist in this novella, Mossad agent and top-notch assassin Rachel Jaeger, is an important character in the afore-mentioned fourth novel of that series (and possibly others); and indeed, we can surmise that the reason this work is given away for free is so that it can serve as a teaser to draw readers to the series.

Actually, our heroine’s real name is Makda Moretti; “Rachel Jaeger” is her Mossad code name (jaeger means “hunter” in German, and probably also in Yiddish, which is a Germanic language; and Rachel is a name with definite Old Testament associations). Historically, going back to at least New Testament times and possibly back as far as the reign of Solomon, a certain number of blacks in East Africa have identified with the Jewish faith. Rachel was born in Ethiopia, and her mother was one of these (although her mixed race father was half Italian). But though this subculture is mentioned. the authors don’t develop it at all. Their concentration is very much on providing the character’s “origin story.”

We begin en media res, on her first mission as a fledgling operative in a town on the Egyptian Sinai penninsula, where she’s supposed to provide scouting and lookout functions for a team tasked with taking out a terrorist. (But circumstances will cause her role to morph into something more demanding….) Well positioned flashbacks show us how, as a smart, physically fit and observant Tel Aviv Univ. student with a double major in economics and foreign languages, a solid background of martial arts training, and no close family (her mother had recently died, and her brother had emigrated to the U.S.) she was recruited into Mossad. (Later flashbacks show her family’s harrowing trek to Israel from danger in an unraveling Ethiopia, on which her father was killed, when she was a very small child, and a later formative experience of standing up to two bullies in order to defend another child, which shaped her penchant for defending innocents.)

Levi, the slightly older agent who recruited her, initially used the cover of a dating relationship as a medium to get close to her and check her out; this probably began as a ploy on his part, but quickly became much more serious, and the Makda-Levi relationship plays a very crucial role in the plot here. I don’t recommend reading the Amazon book description (the Goodreads database entry doesn’t have any description) because it divulges a lot of the plot, not just the premise. But suffice it to say that personal tragedy will be a shaping force in Rachel’s career. The time frame of the main tale is apparently about two years.

This is not a deep novel wrestling with moral, psychological, spiritual or political issues. There’s no real exploration of the complex roots and merits of the current Israeli vs. Arab hostility. Both Rachel’s and Levi’s role in Mossad is strictly counter-terrorism, combating and forestalling bad actors who would target and murder innocent civilians for political ends. That these people need to be stopped is a moral no-brainer, regardless of your attitudes towards Zionism or Palestinian statehood. Religion plays no role in the tale; Rachel and Levi are strictly secular and identify with Israel on the basis of peoplehood (which in her case is not exactly ethnic either, but more cultural, in a broad sense). The first time that she has to take a life (in self-defense), Rachel experiences some believable psychological distress at the enormity and finality of it, but is able to work through it and come to terms with it fairly quickly, as an action in successful and needed defense of her people; that kind of issue doesn’t arise elsewhere in the book. Despite the Amazon blurb’s overwrought reference to her “inner demons,” we don’t really meet any of the latter, our authors don’t really psycho-analyze her in depth, beyond the obvious feelings.

What it is instead is a straightforward tale of espionage action-adventure, with no real pretensions beyond offering exciting entertainment for readers who appreciate danger, suspense, physical challenges, and the satisfaction of seeing a good gal kick some bad-guy butt. :-) That’s exactly what the authors set out to deliver, and they make good on their promise admirably. This is a very well-written, fast flowing novel, with believable characters, all of them presented in life-like fashion. The prose is thoroughly serviceable, and free of bad language, with the exception of a couple of s-words in one place. (I appreciated that restraint, which I regard as a hallmark of good, tasteful writing.) There are a variety of locales here –Rome, France and Tunisia, in addition to Israel, the Sinai and East Africa, as already mentioned– and while they’re not necessarily realized with a deep sense of place (remember, this is a 117-page novella!), all of the physical settings are described vividly enough that we can easily visualize them.

Inside knowledge of espionage trade-craft and the inner workings of an intelligence agency is incorporated seamlessly into the narrative, giving it a solid feeling of verisimilitude. Our authors refrain from depicting explicit sex, and they treat sexual matters in general with restraint. It’s mentioned that Makda and Levi began sharing her bed after they’d been dating two weeks, but it’s left at that, and the feelings between the two, in fairness, are much more intense than the short time span suggests. (Normally I’m skeptical of insta-love scenarios in fiction, especially in a modern setting, but it carried complete credibility here.)

One scene had both Rachel and the target of one of her hits naked at one point, because she was posing as a prostitute in order to carry out her mission, but there’s no gratuitous physical description and no sexual activity takes place. (It’s a disgusting scene only because of the repugnant nature of the target’s exploitative and misogynistic attitudes, but he’s meant to be disgusting.) As an action adventure yarn with a government-sanctioned assassin for a main character, it’s going to feature lethal violence directly described, but there’s restraint here too; there’s no wallowing in gore for its own sake, and neither the authors nor Rachel are sadistic. (She’ll deliver certain death to her marks –who inspire no particular pity!– with consummate efficiency, but she”ll deliver it quickly and cleanly.)

My high rating reflects the degree of skill with which the authors deliver on the conventions of their genre, as well as my enjoyment of the tale (I’d easily have read it in one sitting if my time had allowed!). The only negative I felt is that Rachel’s character arc here doesn’t leave her, emotionally, in as good a place at the end as her friends would want her to be. (And by the time you finish the book, if you read it, you’ll probably also count yourself among her friends. :-) ) To be fair, however, that’s because it’s not a complete arc; the authors have at least one more adventure for her, in a full-length novel that will probably allow for much more progress in her personal life journey. Sadly, I don’t plan to witness it; at the age of 70 and with a gargantuan TBR, I don’t choose to get sucked into the welter of Bruns’ and Olsen’s various series, so I read this as a stand-alone. But I wish our heroine well; and can unhesitatingly recommend at least this start of her saga to all fans of espionage thrillers and action heroines!

Author: David Bruns and J. R. Olson
Publisher: Reef Points Media; available through Amazon, currently only as an electronic book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Hit and Run, by Andy Maslen

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Literary rating: ★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆

Detective Inspector Stella Cole has her life turned upside down when her lawyer husband is killed in a hit-and-run accident, leaving her to bring up daughter Lola on her own, and struggling with an addiction to both booze and painkillers – anything to numb the pain of everyday existence. Though the driver in question is arrested, he receives a paltry sentence of only three years, and Stella begins to plot taking her own revenge. This is brought up short when the perpetrator is killed in prison, and evidence begins to accumulate that her husband’s death may not have been accidental.

The more DI Cole investigates, the murkier things get, as she discovers evidence of a vigilante group, Pro Patria Mori, operating at the highest levels. They’re not exactly happy to have Cole circling them, and decide she needs to be dealt with. However, Stella has been preparing to deliver the most brutal payback she can imagine, when she finds the man responsible, and is no longer a soft target, but prepared for whatever – and whoever – PPM might throw at her. Despite Britain’s strict gun-controls, her job helps her obtain access to everything she needs, before she sets off to the Highlands of Scotland to carry out her vengeance, with absolutely no regard for what the personal cost might be.

Looking back on this, what will stick in my mind is probably a fairly mind-blowing twist at about the one-third point, which quite upends everything I’d believed, and was something I definitely did not see coming. Well played, Mr. Maslen. Well played. I also liked the nicely-detailed way in which Stella obtained her weaponry. Not being au fait with the finer details of police firearms procedure, I can’t comment on its practicality; however, it sounds like it could work, and that’s good enough for me. The action is fairly low-key for the most part, though ends in a rousing finale, with Stella’s assault on her target, who knows she’s coming and has made defensive preparations. Just not nearly enough of them.

There were some other plot aspects that didn’t convince. In the end, the person directly responsible for her husband’s death – as in, actually driving the car – is one of PPM’s top officials, which doesn’t seem to make sense. It’d be more logical to use the person who was actually sent to jail, and they clearly have no issues with throwing low-lives at problems, or access to the same. Similarly, it’d be more logical to have had her work up the chain of command. It still makes for a satisfying and vigorous tale of justice emphatically served, though I’m not certain how there can be six more books in the series. It feels as if Cole has burned an awful lot of bridges, with a return to her job seeming highly problematic. It’s certainly not a light read, yet perhaps is the better for unashamedly embracing the darkness in its topic and heroine.

Author: Andy Maslen
Publisher: Tyton Press, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 7 in the DI Stella Cole Thrillers series.

The Covert Guardian, by Liane Zane

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Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

Liane Zane’s Elioud Legacy trilogy, all three books of which I’ve previously reviewed, is supernatural fiction, written by a Roman Catholic author, and premised on the fictional conceit that matings between angelic beings (both fallen and unfallen) and humans have been going on since before the Flood, producing mixed-race offspring who are physically human but have certain heightened physical or even latent supernatural abilities. That trilogy focused on three strong and courageous young women, who when it opened were completely unaware of their angelic genes, and all of whom were both serving in the intelligence services of their various countries, and collaborating with each other on the side in a covert alliance to provide some special protection for the victims of sexual assault and trafficking. The Covert Guardian is the first volume of a projected prequel trilogy, set a few years before the opening of the previously-published one, which will tell the “origin story” of their friendship and alliance. Here, our protagonist is Olivia Markham, the trio’s unofficial ringleader, and we learn how, as a 20-year-old college pre-med student, she unexpectedly came to join the CIA.

Unlike the first trilogy, this one really has no supernatural elements. Readers who’ve read the former will suspect, from certain subtle clues, that a couple of secondary characters here may also be Elioud, and will remember the St. Michael medal (a gift from her sensei) that Olivia wears, which feels strangely warm at times; and she has a sort of instinctive sixth sense for approaching danger that her then-boyfriend rather snidely dismisses as her “spidey sense.” But none of this is obviously paranormal nor impossible to explain naturalistically. I’ve classified the book as straight-out, descriptive action-adventure and espionage fiction, and it will definitely appeal to fans of those genres whether they have any liking for supernatural fiction or not.

The previously-published books mentioned, as a painful experience in Olivia’s past, the murder of her cousin Emily when the two girls were 16; they were close, and the tragedy was a formative factor in shaping Olivia’s deep desire to protect the innocent victims of brutality. In the modern U.S., the wheels of the justice system grind very slowly, so the killer’s trial was delayed until the summer before Olivia was to become a junior at Brown Univ. (She’s New England born and bred, living with her family in a suburban town outside Boston.) When our tale opens, soon after testifying, Olivia’s been talked by her boyfriend into joining him in a vacation on Ibiza, a real-life Mediterranean island off the coast of Spain which is a popular tourist destination, as a supposed opportunity to rest and heal from the re-lived traumatic experience. Even at this stage in her life, she’s strong, physically fit and athletic, smart, brave and quick-thinking; and since Emily’s murder, she’s been taking serious martial arts training. (And then there’s that “spidey sense” I mentioned….)

These qualities will stand her in good stead when, just four pages into the narrative, a squad of Islamist terrorists hit the beach, bent on slaughtering the revelers. Fortunately, a CIA counter-terrorist strike force is nearby; but by the time the action is over, Olivia’s displayed enough mettle to get their attention. (As they’ll soon learn, it also doesn’t hurt that she’s fluent in several languages, and qualified for the U.S. Olympic team in archery while still in high school.) Before the summer is over, she’s training at a CIA-run camp in North Carolina, and she feels that she’s found her true calling. And as luck would have it, an attractive female college student might just fit the mission profile for getting close to a wealthy young playboy type suspected of funding global terrorist activities. But chicanery, corruption, and betrayal of the U.S. aren’t necessarily things that only go on outside of the CIA, and our heroine’s path to joining the Company may not be an easy cake-walk.

Although the books of the Elioud Legacy trilogy are all thick, at just 155 pages, this one is more novella length, and a quick read. Like the former books, though, it moves around geographically, in this case to locations on three different continents; and the author’s knowledge of the physical geography of all of these settings is impressive. She’s a skilled wordsmith, seasoned in the novelist’s craft and able to immerse the reader in the story, and there are some surprises up her sleeve. For readers who want danger, tension, and well-depicted action scenes, this yarn definitely delivers. It’s not characterized by profound ethical dilemmas or deep spiritual, philosophical or political content, being more straightforward in those areas (in the context of the espionage genre, Zane is more in the tradition of Manning Coles or Alistair MacLean than, say, John LeCarre’), but I don’t view this as is any sense a fault, nor will most genre fans. What readers –genre fans or not– do want in fiction, more than action and danger, is the human element, a central character(s) we can like and feel invested in enough to care about the action and danger in the first place. That test is amply met here. Olivia is a winsome, dynamic protagonist whom we get to know and appreciate, and this is a character-driven tale of her growth and maturation in various ways in the crucible of a testing ordeal.

As I’ve said before in reviewing this author’s work, it’s fiction written by a Christian, rather than the kind of commercially “Christian fiction” the book trade markets as such. Olivia’s a basically kind and ethical-minded person, and cares about right and wrong as she understands them; but by her own statement, here she’s still “not really a believer.” Bad language is a hair more prominent here than in the first trilogy, though it’s actually more prominent in the first few pages here than it is in most of the book. College-age Olivia herself is capable, when she’s angry, of thinking or saying some pretty bad words, including obscenity (in a couple of languages). And though there’s no explicit sex, we know that an unmarried sexual encounter takes place at one point. The author makes us completely understand the psychology behind it; it’s a case of allowing the character to be who she realistically is, and possibly to grow through all of her decisions, both the good and the misguided ones, into the person she’s finally becoming. (That’s what good authors do.)

Finally, a worthwhile question might be, does a reader need to have read the Elioud Lagacy books before reading this one? My answer would be no; having read those books will allow you to better appreciate some adumbrations of the future you can see here, but it’s not essential, and no knowledge of them is presupposed here. You could begin with this book as an appetizer for the corpus as a whole.

Author: Liane Zane
Publisher: Zephon Romance; available through Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.