A Death in Sweden

4.5

*Book source ~ Kindle First

A former MI6 agent and CIA contractor, Dan Hendricks is now a free agent, doing jobs for whoever has the money to pay him. His specialty is finding and acquiring fugitives, but when former agents, his friends, start turning up dead he realizes his time is running out. With a lifeline thrown his way by a former boss he sets out on his most important mission yet - find out who Jacques Fillon truly was and why he was hiding in Sweden. If Dan can do that maybe he’ll have the leverage he needs to erase the target off his back.

For a thriller this was more suspenseful than thrilling. There is plenty of intrigue and lots of gore and killing, but there are also some really slow parts that tend to distract from the show more main story. Especially the romance which had me rolling my eyes. Is Dan Hendricks supposed to be James Bond? *snorts* But the plot did keep me interested from beginning to end. Who was this Jacques Fillon? Why did he save a random stranger on a bus? Why is the CIA interested in him and why are they killing off former agents or those who did their dirty work even though they weren’t a security risk? So many questions and the answers will eventually be revealed. All-in-all a decent read. show less

Quite a gripping thriller.

A long standing CIA boss has been made head of ODNI, the US Office of National Intelligence. Elements of the CIA are unhappy with his appointment and have begun eliminating some of the operatives who are loyal to him.

I lost count of the number of agents who were killed in this story - at least twenty- and I certainly would not like to get on the wrong side of Dan Hendricks.

All of the action takes place overseas: Sweden, Paris, Berlin, just to name a few places. One of the "bad guys" is the American ambassador in Berlin who has covered up a crime committed by his son, now a US Congressman, some 14 years earlier in Paris.

There is some strange morality in this tale - Hendricks thinks nothing of eliminating five show more or six men who get in his way, but then talks scathingly of people being unlawfully killed. It makes you ask when murder is murder.

There is an interesting twist in the tale as we find out what was really behind Jacques Fillon sacrificing himself in the bus crash. show less

This is a murder mystery/thriller set in Sweden and various locales in Europe. Fast-paced and intriguing mystery. Nothing felt contrived and it was action-packed until the mystery was solved. Very nice surprise ending. Highly recommend.

Dan Hendricks is a freelancer who worked for the CIA undertaking deniable projects off the books when suddenly a number of former colleagues meet their deaths, too many to be a coincidence. Meantime he's asked to go to Sweden to investigate the accidental death of a mystery man who may have had a CIA background. Is the man linked with the sudden deaths of his colleagues and if so how? The author cleverly weaves these threads together into a plot which races along to a denouement where all the various threads come together in Sweden. Highly recommended.

Audiobook. Interesting novel. Dan is a trouble-shooter for the CIA and learns that his colleagues are being eliminated one by one with him and his friend Charlie on the list. Enlisting the aid of Patrick, a former boss at the CIA who is now operating a super-secret agency trying to track down some rogue elements within the agency, Dan flies to Sweden where a man had just saved the life of a girl during a bus crash. He did not survive and the peculiar thing is he theoretically didn't exist. Working with a Swedish intelligence officer, they discover his identity but also that he had a very sophisticated, hidden office in a cabin in the Swedish woods from where he was investigating precisely the man being looked at by Patrick who has been show more eliminating CIA operatives.

While I found the rationale behind the cover-up to be on the thin side and the romance between Dan and the Swedish operative tenuous, it's a good story and an enjoyable listen. show less

Northern Sweden, a bus has an accident with a truck load of logs, all the passengers but one girl die, miraculously saved by another passenger, who literally throws her out of the bus the instant before theimpact, losing his life to save hers.
From all points of view, an act of heroism, but in all this there is something strange, because the man's death sets in motion strange events that have to do with him not being who he said. A few hundred pages and several deaths later, the story returns in northern Sweden, giving a precise meaning to that act of heroism.
Although some characters are stereotyped, and the very high number of dead, moreover killed with some ease, this is a great work of entertainment, very well written.
Thank Thomas & show more Mercer and Netgalley for giving me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Nord della Svezia, un bus ha un incidente con un camion carico di tronchi, tutti i passeggeri muoiono, tranne una ragazza, salvata miracolosamente da un altro passeggero, che la getta letteralmente dal bus un attimo prima dell'impatto, perdendo la sua vita per salvare quella di lei.
Sotto tutti i punti di vista un atto di eroismo, eppure in tutto questo c'è qualcosa di strano, perché la morte dell'uomo mette in moto strani avvenimenti che hanno a che fare col non essere lui chi diceva di essere. Qualche centinaio di pagine e diversi morti dopo, la storia torna nel nord della Svezia, dando un senso preciso a quell'atto di eroismo.
Nonostante alcuni caratteri siano stereotipati, e il numero di morti, ammazzati oltretutto con una certa facilità, decisamente alto, si tratta di un'ottima opera di intrattenimento, decisamente ben scritta.
Ringrazio Thomas & Mercer e Netgalley per avermi fornito una copia gratuita in cambio di una recensione onesta. show less

I'm a big fan of Wignall's, so it pains me to say this book was pretty much just average (for him), though that's better than many other authors. I really felt like this was mostly recycled, formulaic storytelling. The action in the last quarter of the book made up some ground, but not enough to make it a real winner, so it only gets