JON COATES REVIEWS BRILLIANT THRILLERS THAT WILL GRIP LIKE A VICE
IF John Batchelor has learnt anything from decades working in the intelligence services, it’s to keep his head down.That lesson serves him well now he’s living rent-free in a dead spy’s flat, having lost his wife, house and pension through his poor choices and heavy drinking.
Batchelor is clinging on to employment as a part-time babysitter for retired agents, known as a
“milkman” in the service, doing a weekly round to make sure pensioned-off spooks aren’t spilling state secrets.
So he’s less than pleased to be woken at dawn by a pair of MI5 heavies looking for a client he hasn’t seen in years, Benny Majors.
This burglar, once used by the Service to steal secrets, has stumbled across a seismic revelation.After Batchelor is ordered to track him down, he vows to go the extra mile, determined to protect his living arrangements. But Majors could be anywhere so Batchelor embarks upon a reluctant pub crawl around London.
The Catch is a novella with close ties to the author’s Slough House series and it is highly topical, drawing on Prince Andrew’s ill-advised friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Despite being only 80 pages long, it is packed with Herron’s trademark witty one-liners and sardonic humour, providing a welcome snack for fans craving the next full instalment of his award-winning series, due next year. Even in this novella, it’s clear why Herron is a force to be reckoned with and the best thriller writer in Britain today.
RECOVERING alcoholic Astrid has moved back to her mother’s seaside home to escape the temptations of her life in London.
She is taking one day at a time.As well as going to daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, she wants to atone for her mistakes.
This starts with proving to her worried mother that she can be trusted not to hit the bottle again.
She then embarks on a summer romance which gives a glimpse of what her future could be if she moved on from her past. But when Astrid receives a series of threatening letters, she realises someone knows about the secret
she is running from and they are determined to make her pay for it.
The second stand-alone novel from the author of bestseller The Rumour is another inventive and compelling psychological thriller. Despite its heavy subject matter, Astrid makes for an enjoyably unreliable narrator. Kara skilfully builds tension through a series of twists before delivering a finale certain to leave you reeling.
BLACK 13
★★★★★ by Adam Hamdy
Macmillan, £14.99
WHEN lawyer Melody Gold walks into a bar in Railay Beach, Thailand, she plunges former MI6 officer Scott Pearce into a clandestine war waged by far-Right extremists against Britain’s PC liberal elite.
Gold wants to hire Pearce for an investigation into a bank with links to the extremists.
It has already cost one of his former comrades his life.
But she has unwittingly led Thai gangsters and police, in the pay of the far-Right group, to Pearce. He must now escape and lead Gold to safety.
Arriving back in Britain two years after being sacked by MI6, Pearce turns to another ex-SAS friend and an ex-intelligence analyst to keep the lawyer safe while she investigates the scarily wellfunded far-Right group.
Pearce and his crew of trusted friends must go beyond the law to stop a plot set to change the political landscape of Britain forever.
The first book in a new series, Black 13 introduces readers to an action hero in Scott Pearce who looks set to become the
British Jason
Bourne or Jack Reacher. A stunning book deserving huge success.
THE OTHER PEOPLE ★★★★ by CJ Tudor
Michael Joseph, £12.99
GABE is stuck in traffic on a motorway, late for dinner, when he sees a little girl’s face in the rear window of a rust bucket a few cars ahead.
It’s his five-year-old daughter Izzy and she mouths one word – “Daddy” – before the traffic starts moving and the car speeds away.Thinking he must have imagined Izzy, he arrives home to find police waiting to tell him his wife and daughter have been murdered.
But Gabe cannot forget seeing Izzy in the rear window of that car. So he spends the next three years driving up and down the same stretch of the M1, looking for the car that took her, living in a campervan and hardly eating or sleeping. Fran and her daughter Alice are also putting in a lot of miles on the same motorway, trying to stay one step ahead of those who want to hurt them.
Fran knows what happened to Gabe’s daughter and who is responsible. She also knows what they will do if they catch up with her. The third novel from the author of The Chalk Man is a chilling, atmospheric tale of justice, revenge, and the darkness lurking on the fringes of society.