Sunday 23 November 2014

Scorpion by Andrew Kaplan

ScorpionScorpion by Andrew Kaplan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Scorpion is a typical eighties based espionage thriller with the main character an independent spy / mercenary named after the stinging desert insect. He is given a mission from the CIA to rescue a kidnapped daughter of a U.S. Senator. The novel follows the Scorpion on his travels to the Middle East to try and discover where Kelly has been sold into slavery. It is clear from the beginning the Kremlin is involved in this abduction but to what end?. Andrew Caplan has written a very good Cold War style thriller but is also relevant for today's world with the middle Easter location. I enjoyed the book however it would have been better had the author not dwelled so much on painting the Scorpion's background and childhood. This information could have been delivered in a more discrete and minimal way to avoid the appearance of padding and distracting from the story.

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Sunday 9 November 2014

The Night Hunter by Caro Ramsay

The Night Hunter: An Anderson & Costello Police Procedural Set in ScotlandThe Night Hunter: An Anderson & Costello Police Procedural Set in Scotland by Caro Ramsay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Missing girl story set in the picturesque hills above Loch Lomond and that's about as nice as it gets. Elvira McCulloch has taken a year out of her medical degree due to her sister Sophie having gone missing. Determined to find her, she teams up with a scruffy retired detective Billy Hopkirk. What a team they make, Billy the scruffy slob and Elvira the proverbial minger. It all kicks off when "Elvie" heads off up to the hills to her job as a nanny for a local wealthy business man and a naked body appears from nowhere. The author builds the tension throughout but minimises the clues you need to unravel the mystery. As it the tension reaches the point where you need to know or you will stop reading, it goes up a few gears and an ultra exciting ending is revealed. One of the best stories this year and would have got 5 stars had the author not used the first person style. For Anderson and Costello fans they are hardly in the book to merit a mention.

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