I’ve read some of Blake Banner’s Harry Bauer thrillers before, and enjoyed them. I don’t think I made a decision to pause my reading of them, but I know I didn’t do it because they disappointed or offended me. So I picked up Invisible Evil, the ninth book in the series.
Harry Bauer is one of those highly-trained, deadly operatives working for yet another of those super-secret, deniable government agencies that you encounter so often in contemporary thrillers. Harry’s agency is called Cobra, and his superiors are the Brigadier, an English officer, and the Colonel, an attractive American woman Harry has been flirting with.
In this adventure, the Brigadier and the Colonel call Harry in to offer him a more than usually secretive job. This one is not even tacitly approved by the government. There is a man named Oscar Larsen, the leader of a motorcycle gang. He has been making a lot of money filming pornography – the unspeakable kind you have to go to the Dark Web to find. As if that isn’t wicked enough, he’s blackmailing his customers, who include some of the most powerful people in the world, for his personal purposes. He’s sociopathic, sadistic, and a megalomaniac. The FBI thought they had him once, but their evidence was ruled out of court.
The Brigadier and the Colonel have decided Oscar Larsen cannot be allowed to live any more. It’s a personal determination of their own. Will Harry agree to go New Mexico, where Larsen has his studio, and kill him?
Once he understands the circumstances, Harry agrees. Larsen has thirty men; Harry is alone. Piece of cake.
He isn’t prepared, though, to meet a nice family who get in the crossfire. Before long, the assignment becomes a rescue mission as well as an assassination job. Awful things will happen, and Harry will take (as usual) a lot of physical punishment, before we enjoy the extremely satisfying final climax.
Blake Banner writes good prose (except that he doesn’t know how to use “beg the question”), and he knows how to plot a thriller. Harry is also an interesting and sympathetic “hard guy” character. My taste for extreme thrillers is limited, but when I feel like such a story, the Harry Bauer books, like Invisible Evil, are good choices.