Tag Archives: Brett Battles

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Aggrieved,’ by Brett Battles

Leave a comment

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.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Mine,’ by Brett Battles

Leave a comment

Mine

I’m fond of Brett Battles’ Jonathan Quinn novels, so I bought Mine. It wasn’t what I expected – I think of Battles as a thriller writer. But this is a science fiction/coming of age story. Nevertheless, I read it to the end and enjoyed it.

One night years ago, seven teenagers took an illicit forest hike, away from their summer camp. Only three came back, and they were changed. Joel and Leah were suddenly off-the-charts intelligent, sucking up knowledge like vacuum cleaners. They also became stronger and faster than normal people. The third camper, Mike – well, he adjusted less well than the others, who made efforts to disguise their unusual gifts. Each of them forgot most of the events of that awful night, even one another’s names.

But Leah, now a young woman, discovers a clue, which leads her, eventually, to Joel. But Joel doesn’t want to remember what happened. He wants to drop out of sight and live in obscurity. They gradually realize, however, that they’re not alone in their own heads – someone or something is using them. And they finally agree that the only way to get their freedom is to return to the place where it all started.

Mine was tightly written, well charactered, and compelling. I recommend it. I don’t recall much in the way of objectionable material.

My only quibble is an epilogue the author felt it necessary to include. Such epilogues show up again and again in SF stories, and they’re all the same and totally predictable. I wish he’d done something else.

But that’s a small thing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Buried,’ by Brett Battles

Leave a comment

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.