Dave's Free Press: Reviews
http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/reviews
being why I think things suck and/or rocken-usZ Black Out, by John Lawton
http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david/reviews/id/john-lawton-black-out
<iframe align="left" src="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?lt1=_top&bc1=FFFFFF&IS2=1&npa=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=dasfrpr-21&o=2&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0753822601" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe> - Very good: 4/5 This story starts off appearing to be a fairly hum-drum detective story, set in London shortly before the Normandy landings. As an example of its genre I thought it was pretty decent, but only pretty decent. But it soon got better, adding twists and turns as we learn that Our Hero isn't just up against a murderer. He's up against the Abwehr - no, an anti-Communist group in the OSS - no, a rogue OSS agent! These twists add spice. Unfortunately, the conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy gets a bit confusing, both for the reader and, I fear, for the author, and it falters terribly before a rather unsatisfying wrapping up of loose ends.<p>As is unfortunately all too common for Kindle editions, there is some poor type-setting, as for the occasional accented character - in, for example, words like "voilà" - the wrong character encoding has been used. In this case, it comes out as "voil√✝". <p>Overall, despite its ending (which, it seems, is universally the hardest thing for authors to write, perhaps because real world stories don't have an end), I enjoyed this book and recommend it. 2012-01-21T13:45:59Z