First Drop by
Zoe Sharp
pbk out February 05
(Piatkus)
at £6.99
This is the fourth of Zoe Sharp's series about her tough heroine
Charlie Fox, an ex-WRAC who was fired from a Special Forces
training course because of an affair with her even tougher instructor,
Sean Meyer.
By this book, she has become a professional bodyguard, working for
a 'close protection agency' run by Sean and has been sent to Florida
to 'nanny' Trey, the teenage son of a software programmer.
Disillusioned at first at the mundane nature of the job, Charlie soon
becomes aware that things are not all they seem when Trey narrowly
escapes being shot dead in an amusement park - and from then on,
bullets fly thick and fast - and corpses abound. Sean is reported to
have been amongst the cadavers and Charlie is soon on the run from
almost everyone in Florida, police included. It rapidly becomes a
'chase' story, with every man's hand against them, as they steal cars
and a motorcycle to dodge the baddies.
If it were not for the excellent writing of Zoe Sharp, the story would be almost
ludicrous, out-Bonding Bond in the frequency of near- captures and bullet-dodging.
Based in the US of A, it presumably has an eye on that book market, though some
of the author's comments on American life are not all that complimentary.
This is the second book that I've read in the last few weeks that has an ex-SAS
guy with a fiesty girl trained in the same arts, on the run against overwhelming
odds (Terence Strong's Cold
Monday). These yarns about retired Special Forces folk getting
up to deeds of derring-do seem a nascent new genre. However, the quality of Ms.
Sharp's writing amply suspends disbelief - and maybe that's what life in Florida
is really like.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
First Drop by
Zoe Sharp
