The Cleaner

First book in the series, the prequel “Becoming Quinn” is what lead me to read this. A thriller that starts out a little slow maybe 5 pages or so, and then just begins to build. What is the cause, what is the focus you learn as Quinn does, as he puts together the pieces of the mystery. By the end, there have been so many twists and turns in the plot, some I caught an early glimpse of, but most were a surprise. A pedal to the metal, all balls out ride. Recommended!

This started out as one thing; an organized crime novel with a lone hero out for justice of a limited scope, and then changed into an international thriller with global consequences if Quinn failed. Normally I hate this when it happens, but I didn’t in this case. It just seemed to fall into place naturally.

Not that it was perfect. The characters are a bit wooden and so was the dialogue. I don’t know if the author’s style is bare to the point of emaciation or if he was just trying to set the character, but I suspect the former since it was more than dialogue that was stripped down to nearly the level that required total imaginative fill-in by the reader. Shit man, give me SOME detail.

Quinn’s character did change through the show more piece though. At first he was the lone operator, tough and master of his own domain. He speaks in one-word orders to his protégé Nate who is in such awe of him that he takes it and barely utters a squeak. But as events play out, Quinn has to make some decisions as to who to trust and learns that trust goes both ways and that he’ll have to learn some new habits. With persistence he convinces Orlando to help him figure out why The Office was destroyed and why he was targeted even though he is a freelancer and not truly on the Office’s staff. This leads to Berlin where things escalate into global scope. With much harrowing adventure and near misses, Quinn does prevent disaster. He has help from Orlando who was down, but not out and Nate

This could be an interesting series, but I think it would be VERY difficult to keep things fresh and not get bogged down in some debilitating, hokey and ultimately boring romance angle. show less

In his line of work Jonathan Quinn does a lot of travelling. He’s a cleaner, usually hired to clean up messes others have left behind, inconvenient traces that may incriminate. He thinks of himself as a "dry cleaner". He removes bodies but is rarely called upon to initiate violence himself. All that is about to change. This time he has been sent to find out first hand what caused the death of a tourist in a farmhouse fire just out of Denver, Colorado.

Quinn quickly concludes this fire was no accident, and the victim no tourist. Things just don’t jell. The farmhouse is isolated but there is no indication of how the victim got there. He realises the body in the farmhouse is meant to be seen as a warning but for whom? And why?

Just as he show more himself was once an apprentice in the cleaning business, so Quinn is now training a young man. Nate has a lot to learn – he is overeager, a little raw, but he is learning fast. There are times though when thinking for both himself and Nate is a real handicap.

When a fellow cleaner attempts to assassinate Quinn he realises that somehow what he has found out about the farmhouse body has put him on a hit list. Both he and Nate are in danger. Quinn’s quest to find out what is going on takes them from Los Angeles, via Vietnam, to Berlin, uncovering a threat that not only challenges the Office for whom Quinn works, but the very safety of the human race. The closer he gets to uncovering the secret, the more dangerous it becomes for himself and those he contacts.

THE CLEANER is a fast moving thriller, in a style made popular by Alistair Maclean, Jack Higgins, Hammond Innes, and more recently Matthew Reilly. Not really my favourite genre, the story at times strained the bounds of credibility. Nevertheless the plotting is tight, the tension sustained, and the central scenario believable.

This is a strong debut novel, followed up recently by a second in the series, THE DECEIVED. An American by birth, Brett Battles lives in California. show less

Love the details of the job of the cleaner and the nonstop heart pounding action. Also has a heck of a twist which I didn't see coming. Proof that you can take me out of the teen library but can't take the teen library out of me--the whole time I'm reading this, I thinking how perfect it would be to give to high school or even middle school guys--violent, definitely, but only when necessary and not gross or explicit, and very little sex or language.

Love the details of the job of the cleaner and the nonstop heart pounding action. Also has a heck of a twist which I didn't see coming. Proof that you can take me out of the teen library but can't take the teen library out of me--the whole time I'm reading this, I thinking how perfect it would be to give to high school or even middle school guys--violent, definitely, but only when necessary and not gross or explicit, and very little sex or language.

Love the details of the job of the cleaner and the nonstop heart pounding action. Also has a heck of a twist which I didn't see coming. Proof that you can take me out of the teen library but can't take the teen library out of me--the whole time I'm reading this, I thinking how perfect it would be to give to high school or even middle school guys--violent, definitely, but only when necessary and not gross or explicit, and very little sex or language.

Many thriller and espionage writers attempt to create their own believable but unique spy agencies, cultures, and operatives. Adam Hall and Ian Fleming did it best with their repective characters - Quiller and James Bond. Brett Battles is less successful. His fictional agency is simply called the Office. Jonathan Quinn is his spy, or operative, or clean-up man - something like that. The plot moves in the right direction but there's a lot of international travel with fake identities, passports and visas apparently just for the sake of having Quinn travel with fake identities, passports, and visas. There's also a lot of gunplay and explosions but in the end it's been done better by others and isn't all that compelling.