Ratcatcher (John Purkiss 1) [Versión Kindle]

Croatia: our hero, John Purkiss, has been detained by the police just as he was supposed to be meeting with the bad guy. They release him but by now he is late and his accomplice has left voice messages letting him know that he was going in alone. To make things worse he learns that his nemesis, Fallon, who murdered his fiancee in front of him, is no longer in prison.

Estonia: Fallon was seen in Tallinn and Purkiss is off to find him. A shadowy, undefined character referred to as the Jacobin knows he is coming and starts a series of events to stop him. Purkiss meets a group of British agents who are following some leads related to an upcoming event in Tallinn involving the Presidents of Estonia and Russia. They join forces and agree to share anything they learn.

Purkiss is no Teflon-coated super agent; sometimes he puts himself in the wrong place and suffers the consequences. Sometimes those consequences affect others around him. But he does seem realistic, as do all the other characters. Dialog is good and never seems forced. The characters themselves are well formed, but their voices are not always as distinct, making it difficult on occasion to know who is speaking when it is not defined.

The action scenes flow well and the underlying story is infectious, always pulling you along. These scenes are the best part of the book, high points which are well paced.

The formatting was an area of weakness: all the text was left-aligned, scene-change indicators were not always present, speech was sometimes difficult to assign to the players.

This book is not one I would take to the beach for an easy read as you may have to work to keep the story and characters aligned in your head, but I do believe it is worth the effort.

If I had a 3.6 rating, I would probably go with that, but I don't so a four it is.

Enjoy it, but be prepared to do some work.

(I read the Kindle edition, provided by the author for review.)

UPDATE 22 May 2012
The author has let me know that the book has been re-formatted.

Tim Stevens' new book, "Ratcatcher," is well written, fast flowing and action packed. The storyline takes you into a world of intrigue, revenge and deception around the streets of Tallinn, Estonia. A high level of tension throughout the book means that you dare not put it down because you just have to know what is going to happen next.

Complementing the main character is Fallon, a complicated and shadowy figure from Purkiss's past. After he is alerted that Fallon is in town at the same time of an important summit meeting between the Russian and Estonian presidents, Purkiss goes to investigate this possibly dangerous coincidence.

The characters are well defined and believable, and just when you think you know what's happening there are twists in the story to keep you on the edge of your seat.

"Ratcatcher" is a thoroughly enjoyable read.

This is a commendably concise and well-constructed thriller. It has a complicated plot which unfolds at a terrific pace and twists very interestingly in places, but the verve and clarity of the author's style ensure that it never becomes confusing or incoherent. There are many resemblances (stylistic tics, so forth) to Adam Hall's Quiller novels, to which I was introduced by someone or other some time back; and although Ratcatcher successfully avoids the modern-day incubus of homage, many of Hall's own virtues are on display here: the superbly choreographed fight scenes, the arduously imaginative methods of concealment and the useful professional tricks (the medical treatment with a ball-point pen would earn an appreciative nod from Quiller). Ratcatcher has its inevitable genre tropes - the betrayed hero, the expendable sidekick, the ex-Soviet religious fanatic - but they are used the way genre tropes ought to be used, as devices for getting the job done rather than as props for sloppy work. Ratcatcher is well worth your time.