Sent to me by publishers after being offered (and won!) via www.goodreads.com giveaway[return][return]What to say? Topical story, using the backdrop of banking and international markets in meltdown during late 2008 used to hide massive terrorist laundering of drug money. Different edge on things by having a ex-secret service personnel on the inside to do investigations to prevent this happening.[return][return]That's the good side. The bad side? It's a first novel and you (ok, I) can tell. There's nothing wrong per se about it - it has all the things that add up to make a good thriller (men with guns and dead ex girlfiends/difficulty making relationships; stunning civvies who get pulled in, get into trouble and have to be rescued; shady deals being made by faceless government mandarins; money; drugs; international travel; goodies; baddies etc etc), it's just that something isnt quite right. Some things that kept jumping out at me: Everything took an hour to explain to someone else; The insider dealer backed everything up to a CD, which I thought you couldnt write too more than once (I would have believed it more if he'd written to an external harddrive or dongle); And here is a cut of a paragraph that I think is a good example of what I'm on about:[return][return]Kari Mohammed el-Hajj was a hard man with very strong extremist beliefs. He hated the West and all it stood for. Worse, he had a pronounced taste for torture. [return][return]There is no reasoning as to why he hates the West (cos the Americans killed his family, cos he grew up in a deprived area and was taught the West was bad by his teachers.......). Also with the torture - how did this develop, why and what does he get from it? This part of the paragraph is practically redundant and could have been demonstrated more effectively by his actions (more detail being given about the torture, perhaps using Western items, such as flags, as part of any degradation), rather than the paragraph above. [return][return]On the whole a good first novel, hope Mr Powell gets to go again.

well paced thriller with characters that i cared about and a believable plot line. am lookign forward to the next one. ( )

This was a thrilling adventure story set around the international banking world. The money-laundering scam was interesting, I don't know much about the financial world, but everything was explained in a way that I could understand. The investigation, and ultimately the conclusion, were well set up by the author. Although there were hints along the way, the ending was still a surprise for me.
There were some torture scenes, which were a bit uncomfortable to read in places, but not too gruesome.
The characters were well developed, and the author did a great job of introducing aspects of each characters' past that helped to understand why they act the way they do in the book.

I really enjoyed this book. It was full of action and was never boring. I thought it was a really good first novel, and I'm really pleased that Mark decided to send it to me for review. ( )