Summer Reading Challenge Book 2 - ASSASSIN - by Tom Cain

This is only the second in my Summer Reading Challenge from Transworld – although I am not actually convinced that we have had a Summer, so the image of the deckchair I was sent for this project seems slightly out of place as I look out onto rivers of rain water flowing down the road outside.

Nevertheless, I am embarrassed that both of my kids have completed their six book library reading challenges, whilst I’m lagging behind – please don’t let them know ☺

And so to Assassin, the third book from Tom Cain to feature his Special Boat Service Operative, and all round action hero, Samuel Carver.

All concerns that I’d missed the first two books in the series (The Accident Man & The Survivor) were quickly washed away as I ploughed into the book on the first night I opened it and the pace rarely lets up throughout.

The comparison by the Guardian to the Bourne movies is very fair as Carver cracks through the action sequences and events in the book barely pausing for breath. In Assassin he is the constant victim of an old enemy and former colleague, Damon Tyzack, who is determined to frame him for crimes and acts of terrorism, culminating in a planned assassination of the American President Lincoln Roberts. Roberts has set himself a whole army of enemies in his proposal for a war on people-trafficking and slavery, which he is scheduled to announce at a conference in Bristol.
The action sequences, particularly the set-up of a bomb blast in an Oslo Hotel, are excellently handled and gripping, with the author successfully placing the reader right in the centre of the action and the tension.
In fact only one scene didn’t quite work for me when Carver stepped (or cycled) into a bit more James Bond meets Jackie Chan role, leaping a skip on a bicycle – but a very minor gripe for one scene on one page out of over 500 other amazing ones.

On my ‘to be read’ pile now are the first two Carver books and the new hardback, Dictator – looking forward to more high octane thrills.


Next on the Summer Reading Challenge schedule is Lock Down by Sean Black (saw him at Harrogate and really looking forward to reading that one anytime soon).

Keith B Walters