Traitor
Tom Wood
Jonathan Ball
Review: Karen Watkins
Action thriller fans should buckle up for a rocky ride in this instalment of the Victor the Assassin series.
It is sure to draw you in and hold your attention from the first paragraph.
The imagination runs wild with attention to detail and nail-biting situations peppered with squeamish moments.
It’s an assault on the senses, like watching a movie or smelling the gunpowder, blood and body fragments.
In fact the action is so graphic and detailed that it’s like witnessing everything through Victor’s eyes. Every move he makes is carefully calculated to a specific body part. Hitman Victor is like a machine. A robot.
The story begins in a building when Victor is under attack from unknown persons. He doesn’t know why, all he knows is that someone has betrayed him and they are going to die.
Leaving a trail of dead or mangled bodies behind him, he is arrested for a murder that, for once, he hasn’t committed.
He could disentangle himself from the situation but chooses not to and ends up a prisoner, for a while anyway, in a county jail in Minnesota.
Meanwhile he finds that his most lethal enemy is lying in wait for him on the outside and eventually they release him because they can’t pin the crimes on him.
Added to the action are vividly described locations from Paris to Corsica and many more.
Tom (Hinshelwood) Wood might have created 10 Victor stories but I felt it would be good to include more insight into this stony assassin.
Why is he so cold and driven to leaving dead bodies in his wake? Despite this and the convoluted story and plot changes, Wood has an intriguing supporting cast that kept me hooked until the end.
The pace moves like a high adrenaline freight train to its ultimate ending, which I did not understand.
You think you know who is who and on whose side, but you are left in the dark, possibly as a set-up for the next in the series.
This book is recommended to anyone who is into the action thriller genre.
