Cry Havoc by
Clive Egleton
hbk out September 02
Published by Hodder
at £18.99
Another in the espionage series concerning Peter Ashton, a loose-cannon
middle-grade MI6 officer. The author is said to have years of experience in
intelligence and counter-espionage and certainly seems to have a lot of facts at his
fingertips, some of which he relentlessly thrusts down the reader's throats.
In this book, Ashton's former mistress, Jill Sheridan, has risen to Deputy-
Director of the SIS and is bucking for the top job when the Director, Victor
Hazelwood, retires. Unfortunately, when on leave in Florida, she is drugged
into the star part in a pornographic video and is blackmailed into betraying
the firm's secrets. However, the establishment try to turn her into a double-
agent, but it eventually goes pear-shaped. The complex plot involves two
different lots of nerve-gas to be released on the British public and there are
bodies galore, both in the US and UK.
Egleton's story-lines are OK, but he is not a very good writer, especially of
dialogue. As in some of his other books, he has the irritating habit of telling
you at great length what you don't need to know – details of every vehicle
and gun and a travelogue every time one of the characters goes anywhere,
including flight numbers, departure time and ETA. Particularly exasperating
are his blow by blow accounts of driving a car… quote 'he got in behind the
wheel and started the engine, then shifted into gear, checked the wing mirror
to make sure the road behind was clear and pulled away from the kerb.'
Thrills galore, if you like that sort of thing, but for one of the jacket quotes
to compare the writer with le Carre is just not on.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
