Tag Archives: Jonathan Quinn

‘The Vanished,’ by Brett Battles

I’m a fan of Brett Battles’ Jonathan Quinn series of thrillers, about a “cleaner” – a man who works as a contractor for espionage agencies, getting rid of evidence – and bodies – for them. The latest book is The Vanished.

Nine years ago, Quinn and his team attempted to provide protection for a brilliant scientist, in part as a favor to her sister, who was an agent. The job went bad, and the scientist was spirited away (not involuntarily, I might add). Since then, the agent sister has been inactive on the job – obsessed with finding and rescuing her sister.

But now Quinn and his team have been temporarily sidelined by their employers. Shocking news from France motivates them to travel there and try to rescue the sister on their own. This will involve merely getting past the security of one of the most technologically advanced corporations in the world.

The main thing that distinguishes The Vanished as a story is that author Battles decided to set it in 2020, incorporating the whole business of Covid-19 lockdown protocols. That makes some things harder for them and some things easier, but did not (for this reader) make the story much more interesting. As you know, I’m a reader who likes character-driven stories. The Jonathan Quinn series is generally pretty good in that department, but this story was mostly about procedures and technology. I didn’t find it compelling.

But it’s a good series. You might like this one better than I do.

‘The Unknown, by Brett Battles

Jonathan Quinn and his team of international agents return in The Unknown, the 14th book in the series. Regular readers will know what to expect, and author Brett Battles delivers.

On a winter night in Austria, a very important scientist named Brunner is traveling under the protection of bodyguards provided by the Office, the private security firm our heroes work for. It should be a routine mission, but they are attacked, there is loss of life, and Brunner is expertly extracted by kidnappers. This is bad news for the Office, which has only recently reconstituted itself as a business, so their operational chief contacts Jonathan Quinn. Though ostensibly a Cleaner, a wiper of evidence after “wet” operations, Quinn has a well-earned reputation for effective and efficient field work. He summons his regular team, including his wife Orlando, his old partner Nate, and a couple East Asian friends. As a concession, they allow Kincaid, the failed bodyguard, to come along. He has something to prove.

They face well-organized, efficient, and well-financed opponents, but Quinn always finds a way. This time out they are assisted in particular by Jar, a minor character in previous books. Jar is a Thai computer genius, a woman. She is obviously autistic, but is learning to deal with illogical normals. She provides a surprisingly charming addition to the cast.

They also get unexpected – and suspicious – help from a source they neither understand nor trust, though it seems to be leading them in the right direction.

Like all the Jonathan Quinn books, The Unknown was fun. It wasn’t deathless literature, but it offered interesting interactions and a fast pace. Recommended.

‘The Damaged,’ by Brett Battles

In the latest installment in Brett Battles’s solid Jonathan Quinn thriller series, he takes us on a diversion back in time. The Damaged is a prequel, telling us what happened before Jonathan Quinn first appeared in The Cleaner.

Jonathan Quinn, if you’re not familiar with him, is a “cleaner.” That is, he’s one of the guys who cleans up the scene after a government agency assassinates or abducts somebody. In The Damaged, he’s still building his reputation. He’s efficient, honest, and thorough in his work. He owes his career –and his life – to his former mentor, Durrie.

But Durrie’s star is in decline. Always a gruff and surly type, recently he’s become erratic. He takes shortcuts at his work, and blames his mistakes on others. His narcissism is devouring his personality.

Quinn wants to help him, both for friendship’s sake, and for the sake of Durrie’s girlfriend, Orlando, with whom Quinn is silently in love. So when he gets an assignment and is asked to take Durrie along as his helper (a demotion for Durrie), he agrees, hoping to help him get his footing again and reinstate himself.

But Durrie has his own plans. In the classic style of bad characters, he’s incapable of believing in virtue in others. If Quinn is helping him, he must have ulterior motives. He must be planning to move in on Orlando.

Durrie is going to thwart this “plot.” And he doesn’t care who gets hurt along the way.

The Damaged was a pretty good story in a dependable series. Its chief defect is a somewhat anticlimactic ending, but that’s because it’s setting the scene for The Cleaner. New readers will find it a decent introduction to the series, and old fans will find it entertaining.

‘The Fractured,’ by Brett Battles

The Fractured

When I discovered there was a new entry in Brett Battles’ enjoyable Jonathan Quinn series, it was the work of but a moment for me to download it for my Kindle. The Fractured is an enjoyable thriller, like all its predecessors.

When The Fractured begins, our hero, Jonathan Quinn, and his wife Orlando are still recovering from the disaster that occurred in the last book – where an important member of their team died. Not only did they lose that person, but there was a rupture with Quinn’s old protégé, Nate, who has vanished.

But the bills need to be paid, and they’re delighted when they’re contacted by an old friend, who is trying to revitalize the secret semi-government office that used to employ them as “cleaners” (removers of evidence after “wet ops”). There’s a chance to get inside the compound of a white nationalist militia. This job gets done successfully.

But there’s a bonus. What they find in the compound gives them a chance to nail the money man who’s been funding the group. And not only can they get him, but they might also get a mysterious international arms merchant, a man who keeps his identity so secret that few have ever seen his face.

But one of the few who has is the missing Nate.

If they can locate Nate and persuade him to cooperate, they may be able to prevent an apocalyptic disaster in the United States.

The Jonathan Quinn novels are neither deep nor fancy. But they’re fun and they move fast. Recommended. Cautions for language and violence, but not as bad as many.

‘The Aggrieved,’ by Brett Battles

The Aggrieved

I’ve been following Brett Battles’ Jonathan Quinn series for some time now. I’m not generally a reader of espionage fiction, but these books deal with a different kind of character, a guy whose job tends to be a throw-away in other books – the Cleaner. The cleaner comes in after a hit has been carried out, and removes the bodies and all the evidence. Jonathan Quinn is the best at his job, and his skills make him more than equal to various challenges he meets that take him outside the limits of his job description.

In The Aggrieved, Jonathan and his team face a new kind of challenge. In earlier outings they generally ended up trying to rescue somebody. This time, due an incident at the end of the last book (I’ll write carefully, so as not to drop spoilers), they’re out for vengeance. An important member of the team has been killed, and Quinn and company are singlemindedly pursuing revenge. Meanwhile their own relationships are strained, as guilt generates resentment among friends and even family.

This was not my favorite installment in the Jonathan Quinn saga. I think that was largely due to the revenge motivation, although the author makes it clear that the killer they’re pursuing deserves no mercy. The book seemed to me essentially a sequence of planned operations, some more successful than others, without a lot of human interaction – and most of what there was, was unpleasant.

I did enjoy a fairly new character named Jar, a female Asian computer geek somewhere on the autism spectrum. She was kind of fun.

If you’ve been following the books you’ll want to read The Aggrieved, but don’t start with this one. Cautions for the usual.

‘The Buried,’ by Brett Battles

Among my recently read books is Brett Battles latest Jonathan Quinn novel, The Buried.

I’ve been enjoying this series through the previous eight books, and this one was just as good, or better, than its predecessors.

As I’ve explained before, Jonathan Quinn, the hero, is a “cleaner.” He works for a private contractor that works with intelligence agencies, removing bodies and cleaning up sites where somebody has been liquidated. He’s not supposed to get into the action himself, but of course he often does, or there’d be no novels.

In The Buried, he comes to remove a body from a suburban American home, but about the time he shows up, the government assassin he’s supposed to clean up for discovers a secret chamber underneath the late target’s house. In the chamber they find cells containing four women, one of them dead.

Calling his boss for instructions, Quinn is instructed to call the police and leave, but to take one of the prisoners with him. It turns out this woman possesses a very important secret, and ruthless agents from around the world are competing to find her and extract that secret, by any means necessary. The rest of the story is strong on chases, one way and the other.

The Buried is great fun, especially because of a sort of running joke in the plot. Quinn’s partner (and wife) Orlando is extremely pregnant during this story, but can’t resist trying to participate in the action as if she were not. It’s her nature, as regular readers will recognize. Her continuing denial is not only funny, but contributes to the rising plot tension.

Recommended. Not too much objectionable stuff.