One + One = Three
Put two established thriller authors together on a project and you might see sparks or you might see an implosion. The collaboration on POE, the first Alexandra Poe thriller, results in a nice, tight fireworks display. Maybe not a New Year’s Eve display off the Sydney Harbor bridge, but definitely up there with a mid-sized city’s Independence Day show.
In each other, Brett Battles and Robert Gregory Browne have found a simpatico genre, voice, style and writing partner, and the result is greater than the sum of the parts. And if you’ve read either of these two authors independently, you know their work as individual authors is damn good. Each is a well-known journeyman writer in the thriller genre, and while they’ve never really crossed into each other’s territory, their work on POE is seamless, almost as if each had come up with the idea, the characters and plot on their own and happened to share typing duties.
Alex herself is a terrific protagonist in this particular era, joining the ranks of kick-ass female characters like Zoe Sharp’s Charlie Fox. But Alex is most certainly her own woman, and at no point during the course of this book did I have any doubt about her abilities or how she acquired them.
Her allies in this book, her bounty hunter partner Deuce and former army compatriot Cooper, both of whom look to be recurring characters, are a little less defined, but are both sympathetic due to their loyalty to Alex, and will likely take shape in future books. My only nits were that Deuce didn’t seem to have enough to do, which could make him a third wheel. But the potential for conflict and tension between two guys who obviously care deeply for Alex, though neither is romantically involved (yet), makes this trio a nice device for Battles & Browne in future episodes. (But instead of a little Deuce-Coop—pun intended—in each book, I think the authors ought to really ratchet up the tension by giving these two more to do in their own subplot and making things a little tougher for them instead of simply waiting for Alex to do her thing. Whatever. Not my call.)
Is this great literature? No. But it’s not supposed to be. It is well-written straight-ahead action-adventure that will keep you turning the pages and yearning for more when you’re finished. It's definitely five stars worth of entertainment.
Some things, like bacon and eggs, just go together. Battles-Browne is one of those pairs that complement each other so well you wonder why they didn’t do this a long time ago.