Colin Forbes (1923–2006)

Heart-pounding excitement from first page to last. Three unrelated stories unfold through the book, all involving Lex Harper, an assassin previously used by the British government’s shady department called The Pool, which has the remit to work in unconventional ways to achieve its goals.

The main storyline relates to a rogue soldier who has decided to join ISIS. He travels to Syria, persuades an ISIS commander to support a plan to launch an attack on British soil, and then sets about planning the atrocity. However, when he was in Syria, he killed a British army leader (during a test of his allegiance to ISIS), which soon has the intelligence services after him, and The Pool pay Harper to neutralise him. This story thread follows Harper as he tracks down the soldier, prevents the attack, and undertakes his objective.

A second storyline relates to Charlotte Button, who is still loosely attached to The Pool and who has copies of secret files that could bring down many political figures. This is her “insurance policy” because she left the government’s pay in disgrace and is worried they may decide to eliminate her. The problem is that someone has stolen two of the three copies of those files. She asks Harper to collect the third one and make more copies (she knows she is under surveillance so can’t do it herself).

The third storyline concerns personal trouble that Harper stirs up with a Russian Mafia boss, which can only be settled one way.

Although Takedown was a very exciting thriller, I was a bit disappointed because a couple of aspects felt unrealistic, which slightly spoiled the read: firstly, everything runs too smoothly for Harper—nothing goes wrong and his enemies never come anywhere near getting the better of him. As one example, this is seen when the rogue soldier never applies any anti-surveillance, allowing Harper and his team to repeatedly follow him with ease. This sort of lack of realism broke the spell of the book in several places.

The second aspect that spoilt an otherwise excellent thriller relates to how the rogue soldier managed to get buy-in from an ISIS commander to provide funds and the use of valuable sleeper jihadists in the UK—he convinces the commander that he has a viable plan to strike at the heart of Britain—he won’t even say aloud who the target is in their meeting, but writes it down, shows the commander and then burns the paper. Yet when it comes to it, the targets seem fairly mundane, and the sort of thing anyone with a suicide vest could manage.

However, the never-ending action and excitement dragged me through the book, meaning I definitely still enjoyed it overall and still give it four stars.… (altro)