Is there a category called a popcorn novel? Because that’s what I’d call 48 Hours by J. Jackson Bentley. An interesting plot, engaging characters, and the occasional hint of conservatism. Can’t complain about that. If the technicalities aren’t always perfect, I can hardly grouse. I was satisfactorily entertained.

Josh Hammond is an insurance adjustor in the City of London. He’s not a magnate of any kind, but he’s managed to put away money almost no one knows about. So he’s surprised in more ways than one when he gets a text message from a blackmailer (the book keeps calling it blackmail, but in this case it looks more like extortion to me) telling him to pay up pretty close to all he’s worth, or he’ll be murdered.

Josh goes to his boss for advice, and his boss retains a security company to protect him. This involves a bodyguard, who turns out to be a beautiful woman named Dee, well-suited for Josh to fall in love with. The police are called in. The blackmailer is smarter than they are, and then they are smarter than the blackmailer, and it goes back in forth in a well-matched battle of wits with the occasional spice of a fist- or gunfight.

I was particularly pleased with the social attitudes of this book. Although sex outside of marriage is taken for granted, pretty much a given in our time, I guess, businessmen are treated sympathetically, and the villain is both a Labor politician and a former trade unionist.

There are weaknesses in the writing, but I’ve seen a lot worse. The author doesn’t know what “enormity” means (of course no one else does these days either), and messes up on the choice between “I” and “me” at one point. There’s the occasional redundancy (we don’t need to be informed twice of the heroine’s height). In an odd orthography choice, quotations are set in the American style (single quotation marks inside double quotation marks) but the marks are left off the beginnings of new paragraphs inside speeches.

But 48 Hours was fun. And it’s free for Kindle, at least at the time of this review. Recommended.