"Killer Intent", "Marked for Death" & "Power Play" by Tony Kent

I stumbled upon Tony Kent’s writing via tweets from the legendary Phil Williams (now at Times Radio).  His late night book segments in his time at 5Live were all too rare shining examples of quality interviewing.   Liking his banter on twitter, I followed Tony and had a look at the books in his Bio.  They sounded like my kind of thing and were on offer at the time.  I picked up all 3 and raced through them.  Pretty sure I finished them in a week.

“Killer Intent” introduces us to London based lawyer Michael Devlin and US agent Joe Dempsey as they find themselves at the heart of an assassination attempt.  It’s a clever split of the two main characters and enables Kent to maintain each as believable in their role and avoids having to create a backstory for his lawyer that lets him fulfil a full-on action hero role.  Devlin’s background ensures he can more than handle himself, but within realistic parameters.  The following books feature a varied balance between the two leads - some being more based around one than the other.  These are smart books without reliance on unreliable narrators, time jumps or withholding vital information from the reader to produce a contrived twist.  Kent clearly values strong storytelling and characterisations over shock value - and his books are much the better for it.

This trilogy is pretty much a perfect set of action packed political thrillers  - an engaging world populated with living, breathing characters you come to care about.  And I can’t wait for "Book 4" - title still to be revealed.  If there’s a flaw in this series at all, I reckon that’s probably where it lies - the titles and taglines feel generic and fail to penetrate or grab attention on the shelf.  Here’s hoping they come up with something more striking this time around.

Check out the series here.