I was very much impressed with the Mark Pryor’s first Hugo Marston novel, The Bookseller. I liked the second one, The Crypt Thief, with certain reservations. Number three, The Blood Promise, lost me completely. I say it with regret.

In a rural house in France, an old woman is murdered by a burglar, who makes off with an antique sailor’s chest. Not long after, Hugo Marston, head of security at the US Embassy in Paris, is assigned to “babysit” a visiting US senator scheduled to negotiate a minor dispute with the French government at a palatial country chateau. Hugo isn’t enthusiastic about chaperoning Senator Charles Lake, an unvarnished character who may have been intended to suggest Donald Trump. But a minor crisis arises when the senator insists that someone has entered his room in the night, and insists that the invasion of privacy be investigated. Their noble French host, insulted, refuses more than the minimum cooperation, and the talks break down.

But to everyone’s surprise, one fingerprint found in the room turns out to match one left behind at the earlier murder scene. Soon Hugo, along with his CIA friend Tom, his policeman friend Garcia, and his journalist girlfriend Claudia, are on the hunt for a ruthless killer who will blow their lives apart.

I liked the characters in this series, and the writing wasn’t bad (except for Americanisms in the use of the word “like” that don’t really work well in a French setting). But there were also elements I liked less. One was certain suggestions of progressive political leanings – which up to now were not made explicit. This time out, in a plot choice that will shock readers, author Pryor removes one beloved character and replaces them with a new character who has an Agenda – one which a fair amount of word count is spent explaining. This is an Agenda I don’t really care to spend time with, and that means I’m dropping the series on grounds of a fun deficit.

But a second problem is non-ideological. I noticed it before, in The Crypt Thief – the villain’s motivations make no sense to me. The plot involves a blackmail threat over a secret that I can’t see as scandalous in the least, and I don’t think anyone would care much about it in the real world.

So I’m done with this series, which started out with a lot of promise.