The novel kicks off with a chilling episode where Paul Tallis, a firearms officer in Birmingham Police, guns down an unarmed woman who has falsely been identified as a terrorist suspect. A year on, Paul's life is in tatters - after being suspended from the force, he has ended up in a dead end job as a security guard, his conscience still prickles and he needs a new focus and direction.
When a mysterious woman, apparently working on behalf of the Home Office, offers him a top secret and highly dangerous mission to track down criminals who have been mistakenly released from prison back into the British community rather than being deported back to their homelands, Paul is tempted. He is given a list of five targets to hunt down but as he gets more deeply involved, he starts to wonder who exactly he is working for and whether it is a force of good or evil.
It's a fast-paced read that kept me turning the pages, but I often found it slightly too fast-paced. Paul managed to track down the people on his list so quickly and easily that it made me wonder why the Home Office would have needed him in the first place. The characters also seemed very one-dimensional - they're either archetypal heroes or villains with no in between, so it was all a bit predictable and lacking in realism.
It's a bit like eating a chocolate bar - good for a quick hit of action and excitement but now I want to move on to something a bit deeper and more satisfying that I can really get my teeth into.
This is another book that has been on my bookshelf for a very long time - it was published in 2008 and E.V. Seymour went on to write three further books featuring Paul Tallis, The Mephisto Threat in 2009, Land of Ghosts in 2010 and Resolution To Kill in 2012.
star rating : 3.5/5
RRP : £6.99
- Paperback: 416 pages
- Publisher: MIRA (1 Aug. 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0778302415
- ISBN-13: 978-0778302414
A book to fit in with modern times. Thanks for the review.
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