This is the fifth in a series of novels featuring Marc Dane, a backroom intelligence operative for MI6 turned freelance front line spy working for the independent Rubicon Group. Rubicon is a billionaire-led multi-national with a sideline in clandestine do-goodery, increasingly against the never-knowingly-not-evil Combine.

In this episode the Combine attempt to bring down Rubicon by framing Dane and his team as terrorists and take over the Rubicon commercial operations.

The book is essentially one long firefight spread over a number of exotic locations and situations and comes across as a detailed movie treatment. Non-action down time is used mainly to show how terribly sensitive and tortured all the good guys are. Everyone involved is a standard superman (you know, only been shot six times so are able to carry on flying this plane while in a sword duel with the greatest ninja on the planet - not actual plot footage) until they are superfluous to the plot, at which point they seem to die in very quick and mundane ways.

This book scratches the action sequence itch very nicely but offers no real depth beyond that. If you are one of those people who like this kind of thing then you will like this quite well. ( )