In the States, its sizeable police forces notwithstanding, millions of people buy guns, often giving the same reason that they don’t feel safe without them. For all the miscreants in prison, there are many more at large. The cops are doing the best they can but are hamstrung by rules and regulations.
The situation differs in other lands in that only the authorities are permitted guns. Victims in both lands feel frustrated when miscreants aren’t apprehended or get off when they have clever lawyers. Frustrated beyond endurance, they might well turn to vigilantism.
But can they take on the functions of judge, jury and executioner, and get away with it? Novelists have danced around this question for some time. As doing the work of law enforcement is illegal, those in support are walking on eggshells. Nevertheless, several are willing to change it. Irish author Stephen Leather does so in Black Ops.
Best known for his IRA stories, the Peace Process put them on the back-burner. He has since been focusing on the UK’s MI5, its equivalent of the US’s FBI. His literary creation Charlie (Charlotte) Buttons heads it. Dan “Spider” Shepherd is its leading special agent.
They don’t always see eye-to-eye, but mutual respect is their bond. He never fails to carry out his orders — such as furnishing security for visiting Prime Minister Putin, though he personally has no time for him. Less so for jihadists, wherever they may be.
Charlie’s great secret is uncovered by HMG. She’s been hiring hitmen to assassinate/execute/murder those she decides deserve to die. Apart from being forced to resign, her punishment is better than she imagined. In fact, in private employment she’ll need an assistant. Will Spider accept?
They discuss the pros and cons at length. The author eschews numbered chapters. Charlie’s argument are persuasive if short of convincing. Food for thought. Stephen Leather pulls no punches.
Lots of bodies
Publishers, thinking they are modernising, are changing the appearance of their books. This ranges from eliminating chapter numbers or chapter headings, or chapters altogether, to squeezing as many words as possible onto a page, to designing the covers with conflicting colours.
Black print on a red background is unreadable. However well meaning, this reviewer turns down the lot. They are counterproductive. Like CinemaScope, Vistavision, etc, on the big screen, they have proven to not be improvements. Please return to the standard style.
It would have made The Farm by British author Tom Rob Smith easier to peruse. About an English family — mum, dad, grown son Daniel — it is offered as a chiller. Certainly part of it is. Mum and dad are hard-working English farmers, interested in planting and growing food for self-sufficiency.
But as their products aren’t on the market, income isn’t coming in but bills from the bank are. Unable to meet them, they pick up stakes and move to Sweden, where they manage to acquire a farm. There, mum falls ill. The doctors diagnose it as mental, which she denies. Concerned, Daniel arrives.
Smith introduces us to a batch of Swedish characters, more odd than not. One goes out of his way to disrespect Daniel. The thriller part begins when a girl’s tooth is found. Where’s the rest of her. Come to think of it, there have been disappearances.
Leave it to Daniel to find dismembered bodies in a neighbour’s tool shed. The police are summoned. Then back to the family, mum’s neurosis and the characters talking about some of their problems. The story doesn’t so much end as peter out.
If the blurb is to be believed, Smith is picking up a following. But multimillions?
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.