EVERYBODY HURTS

This is a review of the new Sam Wylde thriller (due out next week) in Mike Ripley’s Getting Away With Murder column for Shotsmag. See

http://www.shotsmag.co.uk/column_view.aspx?COLUMNIST_ID=1

for the full version. The title, by the way, is ironic – almost everybody gets hurt.

“A MOST DANGEROUS GAME

I have noted before now the growing number of female thriller writers (action thrillers rather than crime novels) and how many prefer to be known by initials, such as ‘C.J.’ or ‘L.A.’, rather than their full forenames. Another one forms one half of ‘R.J. Bailey’, the husband-and-wife writing team (aka Mr and Mrs Rob Ryan) behind Nobody Gets Hurt, which is published by Simon & Schuster this month.

 

It may be a thriller which is half-written by a female, but the protagonist is wholly female, this being the second outing for Sam (Samantha) Wylde, ex-British army now retrained as a bodyguard, or Personal Protection Officer, and security consultant, currently on assignment at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Whilst searching for a missing daughter and an ex-husband (possibly dead), Sam Wylde needs all her considerable military skills and resourcefulness in a plot which encompasses gun-running to the IRA and a tense, hair-raising journey across France and into Spain which reminded me of Gavin Lyall in his heyday. And I can’t say fairer than that.”

Mike is right about the Lyall influence, there is at least one set piece, featuring a Facel Vega, which pays homage to Lyall’s Midnight Plus One, although we didn’t fire bullets across the top of petrol cans to see if a round could ignite the fuel in a Citroen DS, as he apparently did. I know, what wussies.