The Perfect Assassin

As I bemoan the fact a new Mitch Rapp doesn’t come until next month, and I don’t get to hang with a new Courtland Gentry until February (I LOVE that name, by the way), it seems logical that it was only a matter of time until I cheated on them with another operative/assassin/trained killer: David Slaton in The Perfect Assassin.

The Perfect Assassin: A David Slaton Novel by [Larsen, Ward]

The first in a series by Ward Larson, The Perfect Assassin introduces us to David Slaton, a trained “kidon” (an Israeli special-ops guy who specializes in killing other people). The David Slaton has been on my to-be-read list for years; primarily because when I read things like Mitch Rapp and Courtland Gentry and love them, then I want to read similar things. The problem is that those other series are so good that I hate to be let down by something I have high hopes for (looking at you, most movie interpretations of books). But then I saw that this book is getting made into a movie and I thought, “well, better read it before the movie can come out and ruin it!”; so, here we are.

As the book starts, David finds himself in quite a predicament: he had been chaperoning a cargo ship with two nuclear warheads on its trip from South Africa to Israel, but, when the ship explodes, he finds himself adrift in the ocean. Well, to be honest, he doesn’t find himself at all; an American woman finds him. Christine is sailing home from Europe and finds herself sailing through an obvious debris field in the middle of the ocean; in the middle of this, she finds a man clinging to a cooler. Christine, as luck would have it, is in medical school and wastes no time getting the man on board and checking him for injuries. Unfortunately for her, as soon as the man can stand up he commandeers her boat and demands to sail to Britain.

Equally unfortunately for Christine, she has rescued someone who most definitely was not meant to survive, and that someone is determined to find out what is going on. When they reach Britain, the man leaves her without injury (although he does destroy her boat to buy himself a few hours) and she dutifully reports it to the police as soon as she’s able. As I’m sure we all can predict, that puts Christine squarely in the line of fire for the people who sunk the boat and didn’t want David to survive it.

And so begins a bit of a race around Britain. Christine has no idea what she’s gotten herself into but is determined to survive it. David is well on the way to finding out what’s going on and, for some reason, finds himself protecting Christine. Ultimately, he wants to avenge a mentor and clear his name and uncover a huge conspiracy, and he finds Christine to be a help more than a hindrance. Perhaps it’s a tit-for-tat scenario – she saved his life at sea, he’ll save her life on land. But they work well together and she isn’t one for sitting around feeling sorry for herself or whining, which was a pleasant surprise.

There is a great deal of espionage on display in this book, and I always enjoy reading that. Did you know you can tie your shoelaces around your pant legs in the ocean to try to keep a thin layer of slightly warmer water closest to your body? I didn’t. Is that accurate? No idea, but it sounds plausible. It’s fun to read and I like things that are fun to read.

It was fast-paced and I really liked the parts where David was narrating the story: they were almost all action, all necessary conversation, no filler. And the parts from Christine’s point of view were well-written and gave good insight into her thought process and what made her tick. I struggled with the parts told from the other points of view – some of it is from Mossad, the Israeli Prime Minister, other random foreigners . . . those parts were slow. I felt like those sections had been inserted to show context and set the stage, but most of it – I felt – was unnecessary. It just slowed the story down.

Okay – spoiler – look away! (Although this book came out years ago and I am WAY behind the 8-ball on this, so this may not be a spoiler to anyone after all.)

There is a touch of, dare I say, Stockholm syndrome. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. And while it was never in-your-face or over-the-top, that’s definitely how it ended. I was not a fan. Yes, I know the relationship plays a role in how the series plays out and the next few storylines, so I knew it was coming. I just didn’t know it would come so fast and on such little foundation.

So – this book doesn’t meet my Mitch Rapp or Court Gentry standards (those books are pre-ordered and stalked and wonderful), but those standards are perhaps unfairly high. It is also possible that I went into this book thinking, “I hope this is as good as those” and didn’t give The Perfect Assassin a perfectly fair chance from the gate. BUT it is much better than some other books out there and I mostly enjoyed it and I will probably be buying the rest of the series at some point in the near (or nearish) future.

Overall: 7/10

 

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