The Kingmaker
By Brian Haig
Release Date: December 27, 2016
Audiobook Available from WV Reads!
3.5 Stars - Another fun, slightly crazy entry in the life of lawyer Sean Drummond. This is Sean's first forray in awhile into Russian spies but he's no stranger to disguises, secrets, and possibly lying clients. This a shorter entry in a series that never takes itself too seriously.
Sean's revolving door of job duties and side characters keeps things interesting. This time he is conned into defending the husband of his college sweetheart. Poor Sean. Of course he approaches the task with poise and dignity and well, actually sarcasm and cynicism. His partner against crime, sort of, is the lovely but mysterious Katrina. She has the misfortune of being a street lawyer fluent in Russian and getting attached Sean. Soon there's a target on their backs and they are off and running. This was the first book that really took Sean more of out the legal side of his profession and into the investigator.
Full disclosure: Sean rarely ends up in any type of courtroom setting. Brian Haig's work would never really be closely compared with Grisham or Lescoart in this way. Fans of the series will be pleased with the return of Imelda and General Clapper, and take a liking to Katrina. Alexei and his Russian counterparts maybe not so much. This plot relies a lot on smart people doing sort of dumb, sometimes obvious things. But it's a fun ride with a little globe-trotting, murder attempts, geopolitics, and a mystery under the surface that's just waiting to be unraveled. My only real complaint is that the pacing of this book felt just a little off. Some scenes felt long in a drawn-out for show way, but others felt a bit brusque. No doubt this was intentional as to keep the reader guessing and/or distracted but it didn't have the flow of longer novels in this series. A double-edged sword trait too is that these are basically standalone novels and not much in the way of details from one point to another is mentioned. After reading a few in a row, Sean's endless adventures can be almost tiring, but there's no requirement here to start at the beginning.
(NS)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please keep comments respectful and geared towards the review, new arrival post only. The library does reserve the right to remove any negative posts that it deems inappropriate.