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Kate Pendragon #2
Hostage
Making a killing in the market...
A bomb takes out a CIA station chief in Geneva. A serial killer strikes apparently at random across the UK. In Algeria a terrorist network that controls the illicit trade in guns, drugs, oil and cigarettes is preparing to murder a hundred US and British energy workers unless a ransom is paid. The British and the American intelligence services are competing to find the kidnappers for very different reasons.
One person can see how everything is linked, and that both MI5 and the CIA are being manipulated as part of a grotesque marketing campaign. But Kate Pendragon threatens vested interests who don't want the truth to surface. And some of them are very close to home...
A bomb takes out a CIA station chief in Geneva. A serial killer strikes apparently at random across the UK. In Algeria a terrorist network that controls the illicit trade in guns, drugs, oil and cigarettes is preparing to murder a hundred US and British energy workers unless a ransom is paid. The British and the American intelligence services are competing to find the kidnappers for very different reasons.
One person can see how everything is linked, and that both MI5 and the CIA are being manipulated as part of a grotesque marketing campaign. But Kate Pendragon threatens vested interests who don't want the truth to surface. And some of them are very close to home...
368 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 7, 2016
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 25, 2016
From the start it jumps around. There are multiple characters, different locations and no obvious links. It’s hard to keep track. Maybe it’ll settle down… I hope so.
Later. It’s taken me a while to work out who is who and what’s going on. By about a quarter of the way through I’d worked out who was who. It took me a good deal longer to work out what was going on. But hey, this is a ‘spooks’ novel and you’re not supposed to know – are you?
The plot is complex. There’s a huge company shipping cigarettes around the globe, a series of gruesome murders on the English south coast, a terrorist has taken a hundred hostages and they’re already starting to die and a bomb has gone off in Geneva killing a CIA station chief. It’s all linked, somehow.
There were times I felt like giving up – it was hard work remembering all the names and trying to recall what had last happened in each particular thread. But then there’d be an incident or a conversation that seemed to knit events together (well, a little) and I’d press on again. One problem is that all the characters are pretty bland. This tale is all plot and very little time is allocated to fleshing out individual identities. When the American politicians get involved it’s even worse – they’re a homogenous band of power seekers who seem to have no life outside of their next attempt to cajole a fellow politico to back their current play.
It’s an ambitious novel – maybe too ambitious. The convoluted plot was too much for me and I only just hung in there. And in the end it just petered out. Yes, most of the loose ends had been tied off, but just as it looked like it was shaping up for a big climax it felt like the author had had enough himself and consequently closed it all down in quick smart fashion. Strange really.
It’s a book for readers who like the espionage novels written by the likes of John le Carre. A decent effort, but not really my cup of tea.
My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Later. It’s taken me a while to work out who is who and what’s going on. By about a quarter of the way through I’d worked out who was who. It took me a good deal longer to work out what was going on. But hey, this is a ‘spooks’ novel and you’re not supposed to know – are you?
The plot is complex. There’s a huge company shipping cigarettes around the globe, a series of gruesome murders on the English south coast, a terrorist has taken a hundred hostages and they’re already starting to die and a bomb has gone off in Geneva killing a CIA station chief. It’s all linked, somehow.
There were times I felt like giving up – it was hard work remembering all the names and trying to recall what had last happened in each particular thread. But then there’d be an incident or a conversation that seemed to knit events together (well, a little) and I’d press on again. One problem is that all the characters are pretty bland. This tale is all plot and very little time is allocated to fleshing out individual identities. When the American politicians get involved it’s even worse – they’re a homogenous band of power seekers who seem to have no life outside of their next attempt to cajole a fellow politico to back their current play.
It’s an ambitious novel – maybe too ambitious. The convoluted plot was too much for me and I only just hung in there. And in the end it just petered out. Yes, most of the loose ends had been tied off, but just as it looked like it was shaping up for a big climax it felt like the author had had enough himself and consequently closed it all down in quick smart fashion. Strange really.
It’s a book for readers who like the espionage novels written by the likes of John le Carre. A decent effort, but not really my cup of tea.
My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
February 27, 2018
This was an outstanding read. At first, I didn't like it because there was too many loose ends in the plot that didn't get tied up until the very end, but when everything started coming together, it got really very interesting and I couldn't wait to find out how it all ended. In all, would definitely recommend!
June 22, 2017
AN ok thriller didn't think much of it though
January 30, 2019
Gave up reading this book. Just couldn’t get into it, the flow wasn’t smooth and I found myself stopping reading as often as usual so decided to return to the library and start with another book.
December 26, 2019
Plausible scenarios full of political and inter-agency intrigue against a terrorism background.
January 7, 2016
This is Jamie Doward’s second novel, a sequel to his excellent debut, Toxic. Once again our protagonist is Kate Pendragon, the treasury money-laundering expert. No longer on secondment to MI5 and no longer with the Treasury, Kate is now employed by one of the country’s biggest tobacco companies.
Hostage kicks off with a man being brutally murdered. This is part of a string of similarly brutal crimes, all characterised by sadistic violence and the victims being trussed up and wearing too-large slip-on-shoes. We also learn pretty quickly that an al-Qaeda type terror group have taken a bunch of hostages in the Algerian oil fields and are using social media to drum up a crowd-sourced ransom. Kate’s lover, Sorrenson, is the officer in charge of the investigation into the torture killings, a slight coincidence that is forgivable in the narrative.
It isn't long before it becomes apparent that all is not well with Kate’s new employer, that their product is distributed around the world in an opaque and highly dodgy manner, that there is strong evidence that it ends up funding terrorists, including those holding the hostages. Needless to say, Kate’s former MI5 employer’s come knocking and she is reluctantly dragged into the investigation.
As with the author’s debut, the plot of Hostage is Byzantine to say the least; the book tackles issues of global financial malfeasance and the twists come thick and fast. On the whole I approve of this kind of writing. Too often in crime fiction we have a detective, a serial killer, a series of brutal murders. Cue same old, same old, derivative plotting. The author deserves credit for coming up with something fresh, for treating his readers like they have a brain and who enjoy a bit of intellectual meat on the bones of their crime thrillers.
The hostage situation in Algeria, the brutal murders committed on the south coast of England, Kate’s tobacco company employer all inexorably comes together and I found myself irresistibly turning pages wanting to know what happened next. The novel is well written, the tension is ratcheted up nicely and I found both Kate Pendragon and Sorrenson likeable characters. On the whole the villains weren't one-dimensional monsters either.
That all said, there are some real problems with this book. For a start, unlike the author’s debut, Toxic, I found the plot of Hostage to be too labyrinthine, to the point that it was on the cusp of being indecipherable. Of course, I'm in danger of creating a hostage to fortune for myself, writing as I did above that the author deserves kudos for treating his readers like they have a brain. Perhaps I'm just not clever enough to have got the plot. Fact is though that I'm still not entirely clear as to what the villains in this book wanted to achieve.
This leads to a second criticism. I hope I'm not giving away too big a spoiler, but part of the plot involves a rogue financial arm to the CIA. If that sounds familiar it’s because it reflects an aspect of his first book. In Toxic it was a rogue CIA bank, in Hostage, it's a rogue CIA venture capital firm. Just how many rogue financial arms are we supposed to believe the CIA has? One was believable, two is stretching credulity, let's just hope one doesn't pop up in the next book.
A minor issue to some readers, but one which really grated to me was when one of those committing the murders in England gets shot by the armed police. We learn that he was shot in the leg. The detective Sorrenson tells him in hospital that the armed police always try to wound rather than kill. This is nonsense. As someone with friends in the police, I can tell the author that armed officers never aim for the leg or arm but always the trunk. This isn't some dodgy shoot to kill policy, but simply because their prime duty is to incapacitate the threat. They need to stop the assailant and be certain to stop him. Shooting the arm or leg endangers the officers concerned and the wider public. It risks an armed assailant still being able to discharge his or her weapon. As an experienced journalist in his own right, the author should know this.
In conclusion, this was a good book but a disappointment after the author’s previous offering. It wasn't as fresh as the original, seemingly recycling the aspect regarding rogue CIA financial arms; the plot was too convoluted and the motivations of all the characters wasn't always clear. I enjoyed it, but I worry where next he can take his characters. Hopefully his third novel will recapture some of the magic of the debut.
Hostage kicks off with a man being brutally murdered. This is part of a string of similarly brutal crimes, all characterised by sadistic violence and the victims being trussed up and wearing too-large slip-on-shoes. We also learn pretty quickly that an al-Qaeda type terror group have taken a bunch of hostages in the Algerian oil fields and are using social media to drum up a crowd-sourced ransom. Kate’s lover, Sorrenson, is the officer in charge of the investigation into the torture killings, a slight coincidence that is forgivable in the narrative.
It isn't long before it becomes apparent that all is not well with Kate’s new employer, that their product is distributed around the world in an opaque and highly dodgy manner, that there is strong evidence that it ends up funding terrorists, including those holding the hostages. Needless to say, Kate’s former MI5 employer’s come knocking and she is reluctantly dragged into the investigation.
As with the author’s debut, the plot of Hostage is Byzantine to say the least; the book tackles issues of global financial malfeasance and the twists come thick and fast. On the whole I approve of this kind of writing. Too often in crime fiction we have a detective, a serial killer, a series of brutal murders. Cue same old, same old, derivative plotting. The author deserves credit for coming up with something fresh, for treating his readers like they have a brain and who enjoy a bit of intellectual meat on the bones of their crime thrillers.
The hostage situation in Algeria, the brutal murders committed on the south coast of England, Kate’s tobacco company employer all inexorably comes together and I found myself irresistibly turning pages wanting to know what happened next. The novel is well written, the tension is ratcheted up nicely and I found both Kate Pendragon and Sorrenson likeable characters. On the whole the villains weren't one-dimensional monsters either.
That all said, there are some real problems with this book. For a start, unlike the author’s debut, Toxic, I found the plot of Hostage to be too labyrinthine, to the point that it was on the cusp of being indecipherable. Of course, I'm in danger of creating a hostage to fortune for myself, writing as I did above that the author deserves kudos for treating his readers like they have a brain. Perhaps I'm just not clever enough to have got the plot. Fact is though that I'm still not entirely clear as to what the villains in this book wanted to achieve.
This leads to a second criticism. I hope I'm not giving away too big a spoiler, but part of the plot involves a rogue financial arm to the CIA. If that sounds familiar it’s because it reflects an aspect of his first book. In Toxic it was a rogue CIA bank, in Hostage, it's a rogue CIA venture capital firm. Just how many rogue financial arms are we supposed to believe the CIA has? One was believable, two is stretching credulity, let's just hope one doesn't pop up in the next book.
A minor issue to some readers, but one which really grated to me was when one of those committing the murders in England gets shot by the armed police. We learn that he was shot in the leg. The detective Sorrenson tells him in hospital that the armed police always try to wound rather than kill. This is nonsense. As someone with friends in the police, I can tell the author that armed officers never aim for the leg or arm but always the trunk. This isn't some dodgy shoot to kill policy, but simply because their prime duty is to incapacitate the threat. They need to stop the assailant and be certain to stop him. Shooting the arm or leg endangers the officers concerned and the wider public. It risks an armed assailant still being able to discharge his or her weapon. As an experienced journalist in his own right, the author should know this.
In conclusion, this was a good book but a disappointment after the author’s previous offering. It wasn't as fresh as the original, seemingly recycling the aspect regarding rogue CIA financial arms; the plot was too convoluted and the motivations of all the characters wasn't always clear. I enjoyed it, but I worry where next he can take his characters. Hopefully his third novel will recapture some of the magic of the debut.
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January 19, 2016Kate Pendragon makes another appearance in this follow up to Toxic. Set amid the tobacco industry and terrorists, Kate has been hired by a giant cigarette company to secure distribution channels. As well you may guess things don't turn out to be so kosher with either the job, the firm or the spate of murders currently targeting men who have a predeliction for a certain type of porn and are killed rather nastily (IMHO deservedly so). Won't spoil the plot but traitors, double agents and CIA, MI6 all involved and Kate Sorts It Out.
Rather enjoyable to feature a James Bond type heroine who is unsure of herself but is very sure of her intelligence. Looking forward to next one!
Rather enjoyable to feature a James Bond type heroine who is unsure of herself but is very sure of her intelligence. Looking forward to next one!
April 12, 2017
A fine follow up to his highly enjoyable debut!
Tick, tock, tick tock, tick tock…The feisty and enigmatic Kate Pendragon is back and again Doward doesn’t shy away from the dark and murky side of espionage and counter espionage. These pages are awash with violence and killings aplenty. This is a highly enjoyable, fast paced thriller, along the lines of his previous novel “Toxic”. His prose like his plotting is mostly sharp, clinical and unflinching as we’re swept deep into this dark whodunit. This isn’t just a run of the mill airport thriller, Doward touches on plenty of topical and controversial themes in an engaging way, throwing up some interesting questions along the way. At times this put me in mind of Le Carre’s “The Constant Gardener” but with a contemporary twist or two.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews