Just Finished Reading: The Final Hour by Tom Wood (FP: 2017) [455pp]

Dying is bad enough, but coming back hurts – a LOT. It didn’t make it any easier that she couldn’t tell her doctors the details of the drug that had been used to kill her or the antidote she had used to save her life. They were curious enough, and suspicious enough, of the Jane Doe who couldn’t remember who had slipped her the drug or even her own name. It was only a matter of time before such suspicions raised red flags in places she really didn’t want them raised and they sent people to investigate. It was going to be best if she left before that happened. Meanwhile the man who ‘killed’ her, only know as ‘Victor’, had problems of his own. After a job in Italy went wrong the CIA was royally pissed with him and members of the Agency were expending a lot of time and energy tracking him down. If that wasn’t bad enough a high price contract on his life was starting to impact on his ability to do his job. Being a lone operator Victor had no way to cover all of his bases so he did the only thing he could and contracted himself to British Intelligence in a Quid Pro Quo – he’d do some jobs for them and they’d help him find out who was trying to have him killed. Then things got really complicated…..

I’d picked this book up ages ago in one of my usual random browsing through the Best Seller section of my local supermarket and only read it now because of the similarity to the title of my last book [more of that to come!]. But what a difference…! Almost from the first page I loved it. Overall I don’t think that I have a single quibble. Although the 7^th book in a series (I had no idea at the time) it was virtually effortless to get into the story. The main characters – Victor and Raven (the poisoned woman in the hospital) – are quite brilliant and completely believable as international assassins for hire with few allegiances but equally deep seated professional moralities (which actually explains a lot of Raven’s motivation in the novel). Likewise the secondary characters in both the CIA and British SIS are well drawn and believable. The ‘baddies’ here are likewise understandable and believable in their context. I was highly amused at one point where Raven called them ‘The Consensus’ only to be huffily told that they were an amorphous organisation and didn’t have a name. “I know”, she said “But I have to call you *something*”. The dialogue throughout was equally impressive and actually deepened the plot, explained some of the background and fleshed out various characters in such a naturalist way that it didn’t slow down the plot in the least. These were not simply contrived pauses between ‘boss fights’. Considering the profession of the two main protagonists this is a book with a fair amount of violence. Both Raven and Victor are very capable people and I lost count of the bodies fairly early on (although it’s not a particularly large number). There are a few torture scenes here too but nothing particularly graphic. I’m doing my best not to give too much away here which might explain some of the scattergun approach to the review. There is a LOT going on in this book but the fairly complex plot is handled so well that it seamlessly falls into place ahead of you. EVERYTHING makes sense here. It is a world of big players, professionals, amateurs and civilians. At one point Raven and Victor muse at the idea of what would happen if ‘civilians’ (that’s *US* by the way!) knew what was really going on in the world. Read this and you might just start to suspect what that is! This is a highly polished, well written and gripping thriller. If you don’t mind a bit of brutal violence and love playing in the dark world of espionage and assassination this is definitely the book for you – but (again) I’d start with the FIRST book in the series as I will be soon. Highly recommended.