She sighed and said, “He’s quite sweet, actually, beneath all the company bluff and bluster. I kept thinking of Graham Greene the whole time I was with him.”

Jay didn’t get the reference.

“I don’t follow.”

“I mean, I think he’ll end up dead, sooner than later.”

I think of Graham Greene myself, actually, whenever I read a Kevin Wignall novel. The difference is that I find Greene wholly opaque to my comprehension, while I quite enjoy Wignall. On the other hand, Greene has a moral center (though I may differ with his judgments), while I’m never sure what Wignall wants me to think about his characters.

Jay Lewis, hero of Ice in the Blood, is a former CIA agent, now working freelance private security. Currently he’s living on the French Riviera, heading up security for Vitali Petrov, a Belorussian general who’s planning a coup in his home country. He has the support of the US and Britain. However, Jay is in fact a double agent, working for an undisclosed employer to thwart the coup.

Jay’s seen and done most everything, but he’s not prepared for the sudden appearance of a former girlfriend who has brought along a ten-year-old boy whom she says is Jay’s son (Jay never knew he existed). She’s a peaceful person, a career relief worker. She doesn’t know how to handle a boy like this Owen, who is obviously Jay’s son to anyone who looks at them both, and possesses what seems like an innate talent for intrigue and violence.

The woman disappears before Jay can figure out a way to put her off, leaving Owen in his care. Well, he’ll have to find someone to look after him, but that will take a few days to arrange. In the meantime, he lets the boy tag along with him. Owen clearly hungers for a male role model, and Jay quickly warms to him, even finding him useful as camouflage and as a source of information. Especially when Owen makes friends with Petrov’s son. A plan begins to gel in Jay’s mind – but it will involve putting Owen at some degree of risk.

But what if Owen wants to be just like his dad?

In a story like this, one expects the hero to learn heartwarming lessons about love and responsibility as parenthood changes him inwardly. And that does happen to some extent. But it’s a lot more complex than that, and in the end I wasn’t sure what to make of the story’s resolution.

But it was a good story, well-told, vivid, and exciting. I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure it didn’t corrupt me a little.