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A clandestine war on the desert border of Mali and Algeria. Murder and kidnap on the suburban streets of West London. A Moscow CID police inspector investigating the assassination of four of her fellow officers by the Russian Mafia. A young MI6 officer facing the possibility that a long-running operation has been fatally compromised.
Connecting them all is the Englishman: Dan Raglan, outsider, exile, one-time member of the French Foreign Legion, fully trained killer.
Raglan’s quest for answers will become a quest for vengeance. It will lead him to the winter-ravaged wasteland of the Sverdlovskaya Oblast and Penal Colony #74, a place that holds Russia’s most brutal murderers. A place of death and retribution.
How will he get in? More importantly, how will he get out?
David Gilman has given his readers many books filled with action and war. The current novel is no different; on the contrary, there is no rest from the action throughout the book. The story opens six years prior to the main part of the novel when Dan Raglan was with the French Foreign Legion in action at the border of Algeria and Mali. Due to the actions of black ops teams, Raglan’s unit was compromised and all except him were killed.
Six years later a former comrade of his driving in London with his son is kidnapped. He has the time to tell his son a few things and then has him escape. Dan is called in by a member of England’s MI6 who was with both men in the Legion. He is asked to look for and rescue the man kidnapped. MI6 cannot do all the work as they are tied up with the killing of four Russian CID officers in London and have little personnel to spare to do the searching for the kidnapped man.
A Soviet female police officer has been sent to work with MI6 and is searching for the man that killed the CID officers. When it turns out that the same individual murdering the Russian officers has masterminded the kidnapping she starts working with Raglan. Between them they find out who did both the murders and the kidnapping, locate him and stage a raid at the house where he is hiding. Although all of his confederates are caught or killed the main man gets away but not before killing a young woman assigned as Raglan’s driver.
Raglan is of course determined to find the killer and assassinate him. Information is obtained that the killer has fled to Russia and is hiding at one of that country’s toughest Penal colonies and living well while doing so. The problem is simply put: how does Dan get to him and if successful in killing him how does he get out and back home. Hint on getting in – he and the Russian police officer have hit it off.
The action is fast and furious and keeps the reader glued to the pages. There is some character development involved and while nothing major it is sufficient to allow the reader to picture the individuals involved and understand their place in the proceedings.
7/2020 Paul Lane
THE ENGLISHMAN by David Gilman. Head of Zeus (July 9, 2020). ISBN: 978-1838931391.
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