First of This Month’s Thrillers: Tracer by Jason Dean
Tracer is the first in Jason Dean’s Korso series and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s beautifully written, is packed with action, has characters that come alive on the page, a unique protagonist, and a plot that follows a logical progression.
Korso is referred to as a “salvage expert”, someone who tracks down lost items. His clients are often criminals who have had property stolen and want it recovered but for various reasons, don’t want to involve the authorities. Korso has built a reputation for discretion and a high success rate.
In Tracer, Korso is blackmailed into hunting for a large shipment of extremely expensive caviar that went missing while being flown to its destination. The plane disappeared from radar during the flight but wreckage was never found, despite extensive searches. What Korso isn’t told, but which he soon works out, is that one of the cans doesn’t contain what it says on the label; it’s because of this one particular item that its owner wants the shipment recovered. The tension is racked up because Korso is given a time limit to recover the goods: failure will result in his true identity being made public, which Korso cannot afford because there’s a powerful man out there who wants him dead.
Korso sets out on the assumption that the plane was hijacked and starts investigating the pilots and their relatives. He comes across an old newspaper report of a theft from a cargo plane in Brazil: one of the men arrested for the crime, Dan Kujan, is the boy friend of a sister of one of the pilots from the missing plane. Kajun was recently released from prison and Korso tracks him down, only to discover a corpse. The mobile phone they find, though, provides contact details for the girlfriend. They eventually find her, and she tells them how she overheard Kajun discussing plans with two Americans. She knows one of their names, and Korso finds it in the dead man’s mobile contacts. Giving the number to an investigative firm, he gets the American’s address.
And so the trail starts, eventually leading them to a lock-up where they hope to find the missing cargo. There is nothing there but they are immediately contacted by a mysterious caller who witnessed them breaking in. He offers to sell them the stolen goods but the proposal to meet is a trap, and they are nearly killed in an exciting and well-written action section.
The trail eventually takes them to a thrilling finale in the Guyanese jungle, where it’s not only the men behind the robbery who create the danger for Korso.
Tracer is a satisfying and exciting read: it’s Korso’s experience and intelligence that allow him to track down the stolen items in a believable and logical progression from clue to clue, and his skills at fighting save their lives many times throughout. One interesting point is that there is no “bad language” in the book – it could be classified as a “clean read” – and this is done successfully with no impact on the story’s realism.
This Month’s Second Thriller: Cold Black by Alex Shaw
Trouble is brewing in Saudi Arabia, and key members of the royal family are being threatened and attacked. In Riyadh, a bomb explodes in the grounds of Prince Al Kabir’s home, destroying many of his valuable prized possessions. Later, members of a visiting foreign trade group are kidnapped; they are going to be executed unless all Americans are driven from Saudi lands.
However, the events are not what they seem: this is more than local unrest. The story quickly introduces us to the directors of the Russian KGB, the Ukrainian Secret Service, and the Belarusian KGB. There is concern in Russia that their country is losing their dominance as the world’s leading oil supplier. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is increasing its oil sales and becoming a serious competitor. The director of the Russian KGB has a plan to change that position, and the three men are behind the insurrections in Saudi: if that country appears unstable, America will reduce its reliance on them for oil, thereby restoring Russia’s market dominance.
A clandestine recording of a meeting in which the head of the Russian KGB talks about this plan is leaked to MI5, but no-one can identify the second man in the recording. Aidan Snow is sent undercover to Saudi Arabia to try to uncover what is happening and to locate the hostages. The security services manage to track a courier who delivers the terrorists’ demands to the newspaper, following him to a meeting point in the desert. Aidan Snow and six SAS operatives are dropped nearby to observe what is happening. They rescue the hostages but, to their horror, it becomes evident that two are imprisoned elsewhere. The main climax now comes in the form of a race-against-time attempt to find them deep in the desert before their captors learn the others have been rescued. Aidan Snow finds himself alone, exhausted, and dangerously dehydrated.
In the tradition of good spy stories, another conspiracy is also happening behind the scenes in which one of the three spy masters seeks to achieve his own personal goal. It’s only in the final climax that people’s true motivations are uncovered.
Cold Black is an exciting and intelligent thriller that will be enjoyed by fans of Stephen Leather. I occasionally struggled to remember who was who because quite a few characters with similar foreign names come and go throughout the scenes, but the overall story was very enjoyable with good tension and action.
This Month's Bonus Thriller: The Ninth Directive by Adam Hall
I was excited to see that Ostara republished some of Adam Hall’s Quiller thrillers. I enjoyed many of them in the seventies, and was interested to see how well they withstood the test of time. To my surprise, I found that The Ninth Directive still feels fast-paced, showing how far Adam Hall (one of Elleston Trevor’s pennames) was ahead of his time. The staccato style of writing with short, rapid sentences feels modern, and the only point at which the thriller shows its age is when he explains what a laser is, facts that everyone understands these days.
Quiller – a British agent – is a somewhat acidic, strong-willed character whom the reader loves and gets behind; there is a slight reminiscence of Phil Marlow in him. Quiller is sent to Bangkok to prevent an assassination: one of the English royal family is due to visit the country, but the intelligence service has picked up rumours that an attempt will be made on their life during the trip. When it’s discovered that a well known international assassin has crossed into the territory, it appears he has been hired for the job. Quiller’s instructions are to find him, work out his plan, and to be there to kill him the moment he’s about to take the shot. The British government can’t be seen to kill him in cold blood, but it’s okay to stop him when it’s the only way to protect the VIP.
Quiller works out how the assassination is planned to take place, following clues picked up from watching the assassin and the small team he has put together. But all is now what is seems. There is a different plan underway, and Quiller doesn’t immediately recognise what’s happening. The story accelerates to a final exciting conclusion, when Quiller must use all his wits to bring it to a successful conclusion.
Don’t be put off when Amazon reports the book only has 172 pages. Ostara has chosen a font size similar to the original (i.e. much smaller than is typical today) and uses large pages with minimal white space, achieving nearly sixty percent more words per page than a typical modern publication.
The Ninth Directive is an exciting thriller that hasn’t shown its age. It’s perhaps not the best of the Quiller stories, but, nonetheless, makes a good introduction to this likeable, intriguing, and interesting main character.
From a Writer’s Desk
Wow! What a hectic few months. My next thriller, Backlash, finally seems to be getting through my publisher’s system, and I was excited to receive the second round of edits recently. It always surprises me how many words are subtly different between the UK and America. With the need for one edition to work on both sides of the Atlantic, my editor pointed out several places where a phrase I used might not be understood. Would you know what was meant when someone says, “I’ll come with you, so you don’t do a bunk”? I was asked to either explain the word or change it to something else.
At the same time as working through those latest edits, I’ve also been working with another editor on a different thriller. It did get confusing once or twice when hopping between the two books, finding myself conflating the two plots and confusing a character in one book with someone similar in the other. It’s particularly difficult because I finished writing Backlash several years ago, so it’s not as fresh in my mind. Detailed spreadsheets written at the time of plot breakdowns and character descriptions are such a useful reference!
News from the Book World: Door-to-Door Books
We were staggered recently to learn about the history of Avon, the cosmetics company. Did you know it all started with books? David H. McConnell sold books from door-to-door in New York. Realising that most of the people who answered to the door to him were women, he started to help his sales patter by also offering them free samples of perfume. Soon finding that the perfumes seemed more popular than his books, he founded the California Perfume Company in 1886 and started manufacturing five floral fragrances full-time. Just over fifty years later, it was rebranded as Avon, and “Avon calling” started to ring through the country. Shame about the books, though.
(Thanks to The Hustle for their recent article on the subject.)
Techie Snips: Robotic Petrol Attendant
Robots, robots, everywhere. At least in some countries. We’ve heard of robotic receptionists at Japanese hotels in the past, but how about using a robot to fill your car with fuel? The United Arab Emirates is doing just that, with the aim of reducing spillages and saving time, as well as removing the need for their employees to spend time outside in the scorching UAE heat. An app on your phone allows you to tell a robotic arm how much fuel you require. Using artificial intelligence, the robot identifies the type of vehicle so that it knows how to access the fuel tank, and then uses cameras and other sensors to fuel the car to the precise amount requested. No more aiming to spend £50.00 exactly, only to find you didn’t quite get it right, and you’re being asked for £50.01!
Peak at a Blog: The Pace of Thrillers
Are thrillers these days faster-paced than they used to be? This month's blog takes a quick look at why this has changed. You can read it here: iancoatesthrillers.wordpress.com
Freebies & Competitions
National Book Tokens are celebrating this year’s Edinburgh Book Festival by offering you a chance to get your hands on a large book token. Just think how many thrillers you could add to your TBR pile with that! To enter, drop in to their website before the end of July and click the tab at the top of the page.