Lex is a government assassin and a mother, a great idea with lots of potential, just my cup of Lapsang. Alas the weak research and characters let it down.
Lex has to bash some enemies of the state and pick up her child from nursery. The motherhood part is dealt with really well thanks to the authors own experience, there is a lot I can relate to. Gigi, the child is cute, but annoying at times with her repetition.
The action scenes are quick and have few details, this is tongue in cheek, but that’s not an excuse to ignore the research. The guns were poor, revolvers were overused to begin, when Glocks/SigSauers etc would be more suitable, some kind of automatic, which are introduced later. The hand to hand combat is nothing like a professional assassin, more like a drunk pub brawl at best. Andy McNab is at the other end of the scale, using his experience and research to add the details to add believability, definitely more research required.
The government assassins of platform 8 are referred to as murdering and torturing with gusto, but the actions of platform 8 are more Harry Potter than Dirty Harry, a discontinuity there. When a character dies, Lex is distraught, but the dead character was so weak that I felt nothing, again I refer to McNab for good character development and to be ruthless in focussing on a good plot, no matter how many bodies there are.
There is reference to equality, but despite having to save the nation our hero has to pick up her husbands dry cleaning, Lex would have presented a better female role model if she was less sub-servient to her husband. It would have been great to see the husband or any other male character as the primary carer. Most males presented in this book seemed to be from the 1950s, one hung over, one a child abuser, one criticising women, disappointing.
I had a rather poor impression from the first 30 pages, but I had run out of books when overseas and came across this, this book contrasted with a McNab that I had just read. This book is readable and there may be an audience for it, but it’s not me.
Lex has to bash some enemies of the state and pick up her child from nursery. The motherhood part is dealt with really well thanks to the authors own experience, there is a lot I can relate to. Gigi, the child is cute, but annoying at times with her repetition.
The action scenes are quick and have few details, this is tongue in cheek, but that’s not an excuse to ignore the research. The guns were poor, revolvers were overused to begin, when Glocks/SigSauers etc would be more suitable, some kind of automatic, which are introduced later. The hand to hand combat is nothing like a professional assassin, more like a drunk pub brawl at best. Andy McNab is at the other end of the scale, using his experience and research to add the details to add believability, definitely more research required.
The government assassins of platform 8 are referred to as murdering and torturing with gusto, but the actions of platform 8 are more Harry Potter than Dirty Harry, a discontinuity there. When a character dies, Lex is distraught, but the dead character was so weak that I felt nothing, again I refer to McNab for good character development and to be ruthless in focussing on a good plot, no matter how many bodies there are.
There is reference to equality, but despite having to save the nation our hero has to pick up her husbands dry cleaning, Lex would have presented a better female role model if she was less sub-servient to her husband. It would have been great to see the husband or any other male character as the primary carer. Most males presented in this book seemed to be from the 1950s, one hung over, one a child abuser, one criticising women, disappointing.
I had a rather poor impression from the first 30 pages, but I had run out of books when overseas and came across this, this book contrasted with a McNab that I had just read. This book is readable and there may be an audience for it, but it’s not me.