I won a copy of Bryan Islip‘s More Deaths Than One through Goodreads’ Firstreads program and I should start by apologising to the author for taking a full year to get around to reading it. I have excuses, but I figure they’re probably pretty irrelevant to anyone but me.

Description from Amazon:
Thomas Thornton has settled down to expatriated family life in Saudi Arabia. He is wrongfully caught up in shariah law on drugs dealing charges then finds himself implicated in a far more universal situation. Injustice is a bitter pill – potentially a fatal one where your landing card is headlined in red italics: Death For Drugs Dealers. Even with a past life as explosive as that of Thomas Thornton’s, what odds against a future for himself, his family; what of his love for the ways of Arabia?

Review:
Thomas was the best of the best. But even the best get tired of the game at some point. His attempt to make a go of it as a civilian goes spectacularly wrong and luckily those old skills hadn’t gotten too rusty. I really liked Thomas as a man, a soldier, and a main character. Despite being exceedingly dangerous he also understood the value of human life, the splendid variety in human cultures, and the importance of love and family. All of his comrades were likeable too, though it did feel a little like England must be an exceptionally small island. Despite the small size of the SBS unit he managed to run into a whole heck of a lot of Ex’S’s in the course of regular business.

The book starts out with a rather long prologue that chronicles the highlights of Thomas’ life until the point he decides to leave Her Majesty’s Service. While making for a slow start it does give the reader a strong impression of what sort of man Thomas is and why. 90% of the rest of the book is dedicated to Thomas’ attempt to extricate himself and those with him from a whole web of lies, betrayals, double crosses, etc. That remaining 10% or so is all we are given of Thomas as a civilian businessman, husband, father, friend, etc. It’s an important 10%, but the reader is expected to extrapolate for a lot of it. I could have done with a little more details about this life he was trying so hard to get back to.

I haven’t decided how I feel about the moral implications of The Planter’s scheme. The book had a definite message to impart on the subject of the drug trade. And Thomas seemed to take it all in stride there at the end. I wasn’t sure how exactly he rationalised the whole thing in order not to feel incredibly betrayed. I think I would have.

There are some typos in this book, not a huge number of them and they seem more frequent in the second half, but there are enough to be worth mentioning. The story, however, is a really good one. All-in-all I’m thrilled to have finally gotten around to reading it. It’s almost a humanised James Bond. Islip is a really talented writer (as well as painter, poet and more apparently). I’ll definitely be looking out for more of his writing.