THE KILLER

Written by Tom Hinshelwood aka Tom Wood & Reviewed by Detective Dru

“Victor liked to tell himself he did nothing more than get paid to do what the human race had been perfecting for millennia. He was simply the culmination of that evolution.”

So, Victor is just Wolverine with a longer word count?

Victor the Assassin ~ Book 1

Chapter one introduces us to Victor, some bub killing a Latvian national with three bullets from a silenced gun in a dark alley before retrieving a McGuffin shaped flash drive and stashing it for the broker that hired him.  Victor returns to his hotel two hours later and sees two men in the lobby that may be here to hurt him.  He knows they’re not police because they couldn’t have solved the murder in two hours.  Probably eastern European gangsters etc.  We are given insight into Victor’s meticulous process by the way he deduces the two are here to kill him as well as his figuring out who else is part of the strike team in the lobby, outside, and so on.  The two men apparently check for Victor in his room but he avoids them, hoping to get up there and retrieve his passport and papers despite being unarmed.  While the plot so far could’ve been cooked up by ChatGPT, I do like the subtext that we’re provided in the form of Victor’s competence.  It’s very much akin to Richard Stark’s Parker novels, where the actions of the protagonist give the reader so much insight into their intelligence and scrupulous nature.

Victor kills both assailants and takes their weapons – berettas for some reason – and then casually strolls to the elevator and down to the lobby.  However will he escape, since there’s at least six of them guarding the exits based on the receipt for six coffees that Victor found in the one guy’s pocket.  Chapter four was not a favorite chapter by a long shot – pretty cliché. Every spy franchise tends to lean into one element of espionage a bit too much (Hawke relies on swashbuckling and unlimited capital, Gray Man is very bloody and graphic, Orphan X is all about tech).  This “franchise” early on seems very obsessed with guns – appropriate, given this is a series about an assassin. 

Victor picks off all his would be killers one by one before finding a receipt for some hotel in one of the killer’s pockets, so we’re assuming that’s his next move in order to deduce who put out the contract on him.  The McGuffin scented flash drive from the beginning was also mentioned, so let’s all very safely assume that’s what the contract is really about.  Sometimes spy novels feel like the reader is trying to catch up with the plot from page one.  (think Aaron Sorkin dialogue) And others just outright confuse you.  (think of any line from the movie Tenet) But with this particular story it’s as if readers are constantly waiting on the plot to catch up.  It certainly makes the story more manageable but it removes the urgency.

Someone named Alvarez is at the morgue looking at one of the bodies Victor killed.  The corpse of course didn’t have the McGuffin sounding flash drive, and Alvarez mentions he must now call Langley with the bad news.  Next the two CIA guys arrive at the murder scene, Alvarez and Kennard.  They are afforded no help by the investigating local French police.  On the surface this provides a little rogue like tension.  But the more spy novels that are read, the more it seems this is done to create separate silos of plot crucibles, allowing the central characters that work in law enforcement or other centralized agencies to operate independently of the plot progression without disengaging the reader.

Victor logs on to some (South – to be clear) Korean gaming chat in an Internet cafe to converse with his broker that hired him to take out his client.  Victor speaks with corporate syntax but alerts his employer that there were people there trying to kill him and that could have only happened if the broker breached confidentiality.  The man denies it but uses the word ‘us’ while proclaiming his innocence.  Victor thinks broker and client are now somehow connected even though he keeps them separated via his method of doing things.  Victor tells the broker he won’t be returning the flash drive that feels like McGuffin to the touch because of the lapse in security and that he may decide to pursue the broker pro bono for this failing.  This was just a whole bunch of great writing in this chapter.  Plenty of exposition and setting the table but wringing with tension between Victor and the broker the entire time.  Really shook things out of the cynical cliché diagnosis.  This detective is officially rooting for Victor and what a reassuring feeling to be in the spy novel happy place.  Giddyup.

Big expo chapter in the form of a CIA meeting between department heads.  Fully expecting it to be a dull screeching halt of a chapter, but instead we were given a creative yet straightforward way to deliver boring intel.  Procter, our POV for the CIA in Langley and a real on the nose name, chats with Chambers his lady boss and someone named Ferguson, while Alvarez brings them up to date on the speaker phone.  They wanted the flash drive because it contains the location of a sunken Russian ship with fancy missiles on it and even fancier tech that the USA can’t match.  Alvarez is amped about catching the professional hitman that offed the person they were planning on buying it from (Ozols the Latvian) Also the eight dead bodies at the hotel in Paris all seemed to be handled by the same person, so Alvarez knows he’s got his white whale.

Alvarez and Kennard are reviewing hotel CCTV footage now that they have cooperation thanks to Chambers placing a call. Not really a point to this chapter character wise – the cameras only confirmed that this killer (Victor) is a pro because of his methods, a notion Alvarez voiced chapters ago.  Kennard wants Chinese food instead of moping about the lack of progress and this bothers Alvarez.  This is likely some sort of foreshadowing to the divide between Kennard and Alvarez that gets revealed later, both professionally and morally.  But really just a waste of pulp.  Shoehorned in character development is contrived and nothing else.

It's now chapters later and another Langley meeting is afoot.  They learn that one of the corpses checked out 45 minutes after he died, so that must be the identity thieving killer they seek with the McGuffin flavored flash drive.  Victor goes to his plot-key ready safe house chalet in Switzerland.  It’s a tiny fortress and mention is made of it being rigged with c4 in case he ever needs to blow it up.  Gonna assume that’s a forebode.

Kennard revealed as a bad guy and a few chapters later Victor rock climbs an ice waterfall to enter his foreboding chalet in Switzerland. (Where did this ridiculous entrance come from?  Don’t remember that the first time) Anyway, just as he decides he’s going to retire for good because he’s tired of staying alive instead of living – a bullet makes it through his super reinforced windows and knocks him over.  He pulls the bullet out and lays on the floor wondering how best to handle the sniper that just shot at him.

Lo and behold, McClury the sniper traverses the terrain for the foreboding lodge.  Picture Karl Urban from the second Bourne movie but chillier.  McClury tricks Victor into using up all his ammo, but not before one last shot gets him in the collar.

 Some guy named Borland (Reed aka Woody Harrelson from No Country For Old Men) arrives in Paris and we get a POV chapter from the customs agent that wanted to bang him. But because he didn’t hit on the customs agent, this is supposed to convince the reader that he’s an all business killer?  I’m all for the POV mechanism, but a customs agent?  We could find a better person to use to demonstrate this guy’s rigid discipline – taxi driver, a passenger at the airport who accidently grabbed his luggage by accident, etc.  But regardless, because Reed didn’t flirt back with the customs agent that he was trying to deceive into allowing him in to the country with false paperwork, we the reader are apparently left with no choice but to game recognize game.

Kennard, the yang to Alvarez’s moral ying, is meeting with his ‘asset’ in Paris.  A British guy shows up for the meet - Reed.  He stabs Kennard to death in a double cross.  And this is pretty much when the actual real story begins.  You look at something like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.  You had your opening scene that matriculates throughout the rest of the book.  But LeCarre moved on from it while still respecting its foundation.  This book on the other hand is a bit more cobbled together.  The opening scene happens, and the fallout from it gives us insight into the roster of characters as well as the plot’s likely trajectory.  But this book has more or less ended the first story and begun this second story.  Don’t care for BOGO stories…

Rebecca summer is introduced.  Marseilles France.  She was the Chloe to Kennard’s Jack Bauer.  She’s panicking because the op went south and now her handler – Kennard – has been mia since she got the alert that Kennard is dead, making her think her unanimous handler was indeed Kennard.  She convinces herself that loose strings are being cut and that she’s next.  She burns intel in her house and flees to the airport.

Another quick pit stop regarding craft. 

Detestable sentence:

Alvarez’s ability to remain calm in a crisis was one of his most highly prized traits.

And this is at least the sixth time this phrase came along:

-and he made his way to his office-

The phrase “made his way to” must’ve been used no less than 35 times in this book.  Anyway Alvarez’s guy Noakes is going through some photos they found on Stevenson’s corpse? How convenient, but really the point of this chapter is to inform Alvarez that Kennard is dead. He mostly doesn’t care, but is it because he’s a bad detective and can’t see that his death is suspicious or because he doesn’t respect Kennard and that minimizes his spidey sense for the larger context of the crime.  Either way it should’ve been more clear as it would’ve shed significant insight into what makes Alvarez tick.

Finally we get a real injection of tension. Victor is in Hungary and he’s doing all his gratuitious shadow losing multiple taxi charades before going to another internet café to see if his broker ever responded to his last message on the Korean game forum thingy.  There is a response (Victor still has the McGuffin sounding flash drive after all) and it’s the broker saying, ‘call me I can help you.’  The inner monologue/internal conflict is the clunky part, but the interaction with the broker is not.  He convinces himself to call and is surprised to hear an American woman (Rebecca).  They bluff each other, she says come back to Paris and I’ll help you find your assailant then ends the call in under 60 seconds.  Victor must decide to cut ties and disappear forever or go to Paris.  Didn’t we already go through this dilemma with McClury the sniper?  Regardless, going to Paris is admitting he’s scared.  Not quite the mic drop moment the author was likely going for, but again, what a chapter.

Rebecca and Victor have their meet cute chapter.  They argue about who’s in charge and we’re supposed to think that Victor is really contemplating killing her because it’s the truest safe action, but readers obviously know better.  So that’s a no go on the tension.  But Rebecca is written well.  So far it feels like a good combo of competence as well as being overwhelmed (think Vesper in Casino Royale) Victor gives her the flash drive to copy, so now each are going to try to decrypt the McGuffins while making sure the CIA does not know that the two of them ever met.

And in chapter 34, so begins the Hoyt - truly pointless character - headache that concludes with the plot skid that is Chapter 40.

In it, Colonel Aniskovach is at a rich dacha to meet with Prudnikov, head of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razyedki. (modern name for KGB).  Some Russian Banarov was murdered years ago, but it was made to look like a suicide. (it was carried out by Victor as referenced in the previous non-essential chapter) Aniskovach was the only one at the time who thought it was a murder not suicide.  He pressed and investigated relentlessly, to the chagrin of Russian diplomacy.  Prudnikov remembers this and now wants to have Aniskovach put a button on this present case since it’s been a bit of a conspiracy amongst Russian delegates.  And now that Norimov has come up on the radar again (they have some telephone transcript – the conversation between he and Victor) Prudnikov wants Aniskovach to get to the bottom of it...before admitting that it was him who hired Banarov’s killer in the first place.  To quote Han and Luke and I’m guessing Chewbacca at least once: I have a bad feeling about this.  This kind of infused over complication is typically when spy novels start spinning too many plates and the stories that blow the third act the hardest usually go exactly like the last few chapters.  Ruh-roh.

Our protagonist and anti-hero Victor is in the Meridien forest in west Moscow near some country club where he digs up a cache containing passport, weapons, cash and other useful spy sundries.  How convenient that he was able to access these contraband things in such perfect condition despite mentioning a few chapters ago about how long it had been since he’d been to Russia and that he was angry with himself for returning because he had always planned on never going back.  But still somehow he has undisturbed customized to-this-plot video game level caches on demand.  We are knee deep in the lazy susan portion of the story, rotating the plot and its devices for the next Act.  I suspect this is the same feeling a German Shepherd gets every time you pull up to the vet’s office and try to convince her it’s going to be different this time. 

CHAPTER 42!!! Welp, it’s getting worse.  Victor meets Norimov to get his McGuffin drive back, now that it’s ostensibly decrypted. But wait, there’s more!  The KGB SVR shows up too because they tapped the phones.  And Colonel Aniskovach is looking for Victor but he also plans to apprehend Norimov.  However, it turns out later that Norimov was working for the state Russians the whole time, even though we the readers are duped and not given this information yet.  How contrived and cheap.  Anyway, then there’s explosions.

Back to Rebecca.  Thankfully and even more conveniently, she just so happens to have a cousin who just so happens to also live to Paris who just so happens to have a fully furnished apartment that he’s not using at the moment that the CIA just so happens to know nothing about. Spoiler alert – they do know about it, but the reader is told the exact opposite during this chapter to keep the story moving along.  Just like last chapter!  Yippee!

 Victor, now being hunted by the SVR, our little brood of Russians in this story, as well as the state run Russians easily escapes to Estonia in a vegetable truck by hiding in the back.  Because people never check the cargo areas of large vehicles during nationwide manhunts. 

And now in Chapter forty eight we start up a new story thread to try to give some depth to the 42 different Russians we’ve had to weave in and out of this tale in order to keep things plausible.  The Colonel asks Prudnikov the head of KGB to be deliberately assigned to handling Victor, because the specific glory from capturing him would benefit the both of them because of reasons. 

Alvarez finally reveals to the reader why the appendix Hoyt mattered.  His death seems suspicious and is the inciting incident that persuades Alvarez to start considering that this was all an inside job by the CIA and the ensuing investigation is being contaminated by a mole.  Don’t understand the jump in logic here, since we already had one death that should’ve been suspicious that got swept under the rug in Kennard.  But hey we need a reason for Hoyt, so apparently this was it.   Agree to disagree.

Another couple of chapters where we’re given action scenes for external conflicts then laptop safehouse chapters for internal conflict.  Everyone is converging on this shell company Olympus Trading where we’ll have our Third Act Letdown Climax.

It’s another three or four chapters later and Victor and Rebecca are in Cyprus where Olympus Trading is located.  They’re scouting and a ‘tourist’ is following them.  This whole scene is reminiscent of the airport scene in Dr. No with all the tails and follows and binoculars and side-eyes.  Like how the hell are you people not noticing one another?  Anyway, the precious missiles are on some continental shelf near Tanzinia.

Oh look, more disappointment.  We’re looking at you Chapter sixty.  LeFevre a French cop that had the initial crime scene at the hotel murders somehow contacts Alvarez out of the blue (how did he even get a hold of him), they set up a meet.  LeFevre just randomly decides (right before the third act, how convenient) to give Alvarez everything he knows about the case.  Reason is because Kennard’s death is now coming off like a deliberate murder and not a mugging gone wrong because the cell phone near the scene had recent incoming calls after the mugging from the Marseille apartment that everyone somehow knows about even though it belongs to the cousin of a woman that nobody can identify.  LeFevre knows that this random American woman, Ozol’s killer, and Kennard are all connected but he isn’t sure how.  He’s hoping Alvarez can connect the dots.  Quite possibly one of the most contrived and half-assed chapters ever written.  Lazy Susan for the win!  And just to beat the dead horse one more time, this further proves the whole Hoyt thing was pointless.  Because even if Hoyt’s death hadn’t spawned Alvarez’s suspicious of betrayal, he still would’ve been pointed in that direction when this French cop showed up out of nowhere and dropped all those pertinent loose threads in his lap.

OK, Chapter sixty three was great.  Victor breaks into the Olympus Trading company safe and steals files.  A really fun and enjoyable informative breakdown of how to crack locks and most safes.

And while sixty three was great, Chapter sixty four was nothing if not unexpected.  Rebecca gets room service while waiting for Victor to get back and some bad guy shows up instead.  Victor returns to the hotel and finds Rebecca dead in the bathtub! (Color this detective pleasantly surprised). He deduces that the room is wired because the lamps – secondary lights – aren’t working.  He cobbles together a makeshift electrine line and feeds it to the light switch where the c4 is packed.  He remotely detonates it, leaving Reed to assume the job was completed and that both Rebecca and Victor are dead.  And credit to the author, the hot streak continued into the next chapter.

Internal conflict for Ferguson is spelled out in a soliloquy to Sykes.  They’re in a bar in Arlington when Sykes shows with a file, stating that the explosion at the hotel wiped out both Rebecca and Victor.  (and he also said ‘he’ has the drive too). Ferguson states that Reed was worth every penny then they see in the file that Tanzania is where the sunk ship. Because of Alvarez’ suspicion, Ferguson tells Sykes they must sell to North Korea or the middle east but not to western countries because 1) of Alvarez and 2) Uncle Sam forgot about Ferguson after all his years of service.  Now his skills are obsolete and his ego is bruised because he’s no longer the belle of the CIA ball.  Excellent writing; however, the conflict that we’re supposed to be recognizing in Ferguson and Sykes’ diverging morality is pretty weak.  Ferguson has been around forever and seen it all but now he’s surprised that the new guy is still an idealist?  Lame.  And with Ferguson’s network of villainry (like Hoyt!!!), he has an infinite number of easier and more lucrative opportunities to stick it to the old USA if that’s really what’s bothering him.  It feels like the author never bothered to give the villains any weight and just tried to install a whole bunch of aftermarket accessories upon revision in order to make the base model seem more luxurious.  But, the standoff between these two was so engaging in its ability to remain fraught with tension while still maintaining this cool calm and collected demeanor that both must demonstrate while sitting in the middle of a CIA bar.

And now for Chapter 69 (dude). This was the chapter that said the quiet part out loud.  Sykes is in Tanzania with the two Seal divers he was told to hire per Ferguson.  They’re on a boat and have located the 8 sunken missiles.  All but two are totaled, but two is more than enough to get rich on the black market. It’s mostly inner conflict from Sykes as he’s now grappling with being a traitor despite claiming to Ferguson he was a patriot.  But, his parents were very rich and he lives in a disproportionately nice place (per Alvarez’s investigation of him in a previous chapter) so why would black market money motivate him?  He’s already loaded thanks to his parents and he's an idealist and a patriot thanks to his previous arguments with Ferguson.  Christ, he even says as much in this chapter.  The character flat out admits he has a poor motive.  More like poor writing. 

Three logistics chapter later and Colonel Gennady Aniskovach and Victor are both at the same hotel on the Tanzanian coast and the Colonel just happens to show up mere moments before Victor makes his move on Reed to extract intel. 

HOW CONVENIENT!

Victor attacks him in an elevator but deduces that he’s not here because of Victor, but rather he’s here because of the McGuffin flash drive.  He also tells Victor that Norimov sold him out – then the elevator door opens and there’s Reed just standing there.  What an utterly silly chapter.

Now we’re on to our big Sherlock and Moriarty moment.  And…what a long and boring knife fight between Victor and Reed.  Lots of ‘more pain than he’d ever felt,’ lots of ‘feeling like you’re about to die,’ lots of ‘gotta fight through the pain.’  Reed gets killed and Victor drags himself – beg your pardon, made his way – to a Tanga hospital.

And of course, let’s take a moment to set the stage for book two instead of worrying about making book one any good.  Colonel Gennady Aniskovach is summoned to Prudnikov’s office, as they were in agreement earlier in the book that Colonel would fix the missile and Victor problem.  He did not obviously.  But he convinced the Russian state that he was a hero for destroying the missiles so that USA couldn’t obtain them.  It’s not what really happened but that doesn’t matter to the oligarchs and Prudnikov reluctantly concedes the Colonel’s brilliant PR tactics.  But he’s assigned to hunt down the killer at large (Victor) nonetheless.  And so the cat & mouse of book two has begun.

Finally we’re almost done!  Victor wakes up in a private room in a hospital.  Some fat American posing as a doctor shows up and is looking to be his new boss for off the record USA contracts.  He likes him because he’s not only an assassin but is presumed dead.  And in return he can make sure he doesn’t run into diplomatic problems in Western countries (but why would he if they think he’s dead?) Then Victor wants to know the name of the person that started this whole Blackwater type CIA secret murder thing and the doctor just happens to have a prepared envelope that answers that very question. 

HOW CONVENIENT!

Turns out the fat doctor was Procter – well disguised to the author’s credit.  He walks outside to someone named Mr. Clarke? and feigns a conversation that he just had with Victor to put this Clarke clown at ease about the missiles.  Victor’s first assignment for his new boss is Ferguson.

Despite the burgeoning cynicism throughout this review, this was overall a pretty good book.  It was probably a favorite stock spy novel that was read this year, though that’s just as much an indictment of the 2024 list as it is an endorsement of this story.  This detective is not the slightest bit interested in a sequel and will not be purchasing or reading it.  The author did a great job of distilling the plot as well as lightly highlighting multiple themes throughout the book, one being the nurture vs nature of violence and which is more culpable, and another being the subtle but important distinction between justice and vengeance.  Characters were a manageable enough roster; all seemed to have their own arcs. It was straight forward enough while still having plenty of twists and turns.  But both plot and character tilted toward the melodramatic.  And once the plot and the characters had to collide, the melodrama and the contrived circumstances to keep things feasibly moving became a bit much.  This book follows the template of most mediocre 007 films; the first two acts are engaging as we see the table get set, meet our players, and observe the initial conflict and its ascension, but the third act becomes a convoluted mess where miracle after miracle must occur for the story to convince itself it has stuck the landing.