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Will Jordan follows in Matt Hilton's footsteps in taking an English protagonist into a US setting in this assured and entertaining debut. Ryan Drake, an ex-Special Forces soldier, now works for the CIA as a 'shepherd'. It's his job to find people and bring them home. He heads an elite investigation team made up of a group of operatives who are the best at what they do, even if that doesn't always make them the easiest of people to work with. On this occasion, he's given the task of breaking a veteran agent, codenamed Maras, out of a top security prison in Siberia. She's been there for years but Drake's bosses have decided that it's now time to extract her from a brutal imprisonment. The narrative moves on from a slightly slow start with admirable pace as Drake leads the assault on Khatyrgan Prison. The weather is getting worse and they have a limited time to achieve their objective before their air support will no longer be able to extract them. Each team member plays they part in the operation, from veteran sniper, Keegan, to linguist Jonas Dietrich, a difficult man to work with at the best of times, and an assault on a maximum security prison certainly couldn't be described as the best of times by even the biggest optimist. For backup, Drake brings on board reliable, ex-Delta Force soldier Cole Mason, and electronic specialist Keira Frost. The woman they've been sent to retrieve has been brutalized almost beyond belief, but is still able to play an active part in the escape and Drake and his team soon learn that Maras more than lives up to her formidable reputation. They also soon learn that their bosses aren't the only ones with an interest in Maras and Drake is very quickly pitted against his own team when he is forced to go on the run with the woman he was sent to bring home. One of Jordan's strongest suits is characterization, and he draws an economical but always convincing picture of the people who populate this long but not unnecessarily padded thriller. There are shades of grey in all the characters and nothing is ever quite what it seems, least of all the enigmatic Maras. Drake's relationship with his team provides some of the strongest passages in the book, and he does a good job with male and female characters alike, not something that all thriller writers can boast. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, June 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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