George Smiley, Jason Bourne, James Bond, Jack Ryan – authors and readers seem to love spies and covert agents, especially those whose adventures span multiple books.
As a reader, the appeal of a book series is a world which grows with each instalment and a character who grows in stature and status as they complete each mission.
Midway through re-reading The Bourne Identity, I was contacted by the PR agent for a new self-published eBook called The Shadow of Medea.
Would I be interested in reading it and sharing my thoughts with our readers?
Now, I’ve not read a lot of self-published titles.
Although some are just as worthy as traditionally published books, I’ve encountered others which were pretty poor. The money wasted on those may not be much, but it’s enough to push me towards safer purchases.
But the description of The Shadow of Medea and author James Flynn (reproduced below) appealed to me:
“James has lived a very interesting life, in fact much of his life has been deemed classified! He worked for many years at the sharp end of covert intelligence, operating for various different intelligence services, working on top-secret operations and acting as a strategic trainer across the globe.
“Having now left the intelligence service, he is working as a security consultant and writer, this is the first in his Luke Temple series…”
The promise of firsthand knowledge and insight is always a lure and the plot synopsis also seemed pretty exciting:
“Luke Temple does not exist; the systematic shut down of Group 9 has tossed him callously back into the civilian world with nothing, but a lethal set of skills. He craves objectives, needs them to keep the darkness at bay.
So when offered a highly dangerous private job by an anonymous employer he instantly accepts. It is a decision that will send him crashing into the violent heart of National Security as he realises that a mysterious and ruthless entity known only as Medea will stop at nothing to see his target captured…and Temple dead.”
With a free copy on offer, I had nothing to lose if the book turned out to be a duffer.
So I parked Jason Bourne in Paris and joined Temple in New York at the start of what turned out to be a very enjoyable action romp.
I won’t give away any plot details, but The Shadow of Medea is a thoroughly enjoyable read with a well paced plot and a tough, but likeable ‘hero’ in 7/7 widower Luke Temple.
Temple is helped in his mission by a generous amount of coincidence and good fortune, but that’s pretty much standard for the genre.
I did have a couple of niggles though.
I’ve not heard the London Eye called the Millennium Wheel in ages, the Metropolitan Police are a Service, not a Force and the Commissioner is normally Knighted. Given the book bestows a Knighthood on one major character, it seems odd to omit the Commissioner’s traditional honour!
Quibbles aside, I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the upcoming sequel.
Fans of McNab and Ryan will find lots to like here and even the most strident self-publishing is likely to find this title an enjoyable way of passing a couple of hours.
The Shadow of Medea is available from the Amazon Kindle store.
