{"id":5509,"date":"2013-10-09T20:16:08","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T00:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5509"},"modified":"2013-10-09T20:16:08","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T00:16:08","slug":"the-severance-kill-by-tim-stevens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=5509","title":{"rendered":"The Severance Kill, by Tim Stevens"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
\nI reviewed a previous novel<\/strong> by Tim Stevens, Ratcatcher<\/a>, a while back. I liked it, but thought it went a little over the top, demanding the kind of suspension of disbelief that\u2019s better suited to action movies. Severance Kill<\/a><\/i> dials the improbabilities back a little while remaining a fast, tense, wall-to-wall action story.
\nMartin Calvary works for a top-secret English intelligence organization called the Chapel (and yes, I\u2019m sure the names are significant). The Chapel specializes in assassinations, deniable by the government. Martin joined up after a military stint in Bosnia, where he spared someone\u2019s life with horrific consequences. For a time he was content to kill the bad guys good and dead.
\nBut recently he\u2019s grown weary of the exercise. Perhaps they deserve to lose their lives, but does he have the right to take them?
\nSo he quits. Only his boss has incriminating evidence on him. He wants one more job out of him. There\u2019s an English traitor, a defector to the old Soviet Union. It\u2019s been decided he has to die. If Martin will just do this one, he can walk away free.
\nMartin doesn\u2019t trust his handler, but he goes to Prague to do the job. Before long he\u2019s tangling with Russian spies, Czech mobsters, and a group of na\u00efve young activists. Martin gets attacked repeatedly, captured, and tortured, gradually figuring out he\u2019s been lied to, and setting a trap of his own.
\nSeverance Kill<\/i> is not for the squeamish. There\u2019s lots of violence \u2013 the scenes of Martin\u2019s torture are particularly intense. As in Ratcatcher<\/i>, one wonders how the hero can continue functioning physically, but it\u2019s less of a stretch this time out. The plot doesn\u2019t bear close analysis, but taken as an action romp the book works very well indeed. The characters are especially good. Recommended for those who like this sort of thing (I do). Cautions for the aforementioned violence, some sex, and language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I reviewed a previous novel by Tim Stevens, Ratcatcher, a while back. I liked it, but thought it went a little over the top, demanding the kind of suspension of disbelief that\u2019s better suited to action movies. Severance Kill dials the improbabilities back a little while remaining a fast, tense, wall-to-wall action story. Martin Calvary … Continue reading The Severance Kill, by Tim Stevens<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[2317,2546,3129,3142],"class_list":["post-5509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-ratcatcher","tag-severance-kill","tag-thriller","tag-tim-stevens"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}