Genre: Thriller
Description:
“The German chancellor, Claudia Meyer, is riding a wave of popularity
at home. But she also has her enemies, and one of them has hired an assassin -
nicknamed "The Scorpion" - for twenty million Euros to kill her.
Little does the chancellor know that the Scorpion is relentless. He is
ruthless, and he is extremely good at his job. The government has no clue what
the Scorpion looks like and how he will strike. Not even her bodyguards are a
guarantee of safety. All they know is that the Scorpion leaves a trail of dead
bodies in his wake. Captain Sophie Decker of German Intelligence rapidly
becomes Meyer's only chance of ultimate survival, along with her colleague,
Lieutenant Wolfgang Schmitz.
Decker and Schmitz are given an order - stop the Scorpion by any means
necessary - before the Scorpion gets to the chancellor.”
Author:
“Mark is a 40-something Scotsman, now living the expatriate lifestyle
in Würzburg, Germany. He is married to a beautiful German woman, and is
part-owner to a gorgeous but crazy dog called Schlumpf.”
Appraisal:
There is a lot to like about this book. The overall story is good. The
characters are okay and the author puts words together well enough.
The problem is when you get into the details of the story there are
things that happen or the characters do that aren’t credible. For example,
Captain Decker doing things that are of questionable legality. Pushing the
limits some of the time might be believable, but she did this too much for me
to buy into it.
Then when the bad guy in this story, The Scorpion, realizes that he’s
not going to get paid the remainder of the money for what he was hired to do,
there is no way any sane person is going to think he’d continue due to “professional
pride.” My bull-pucky indicator went into full alert.
At times, as readers, we have to suspend disbelief about things that
we know aren’t true. But there are limits and I found myself hitting against
those limits way too often while reading The
Renegade Spy.
FYI:
Uses UK spelling conventions.
Format/Typo
Issues:
A moderate number of proofing misses. Enough to notice, especially in
a book this short, but not enough to decrease the rating.
Rating:
*** Three Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate
word count: 25-30,000 words
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