Rough Stone Rolling

On New Year’s Eve, 2007, I wandered into a bookstore in Laguna Beach, California and struck up a conversation with the owner. After sharing a few passionate minutes talking about books we loved, she excused herself, ducked in the back, and returned with two books– advance copies– asking if I’d be interested in reading and writing reviews for them. Flattered, of course, I accepted. Since then, I’ve sent her reviews and she’s sent me more books, and I only hope this gig lasts a while ’cause it’s saving me a lot of money on my favorite hobby. Meanwhile, I’m going to occasionally put a review on my site on the off-chance it piques someone’s interest. Here is the first:

“The Accident Man” by Tom Cain

Since I was in college, I’ve always been a big fan of espionage and political thrillers: Bond, Bourne, Pitt, Smiley, the list goes on. It’s been a while since I’ve discovered a new hero who could keep me reading into the night, but now he’s finally come—Sam Carver, ex-Royal Marine; assassin for hire. For the right fee—and the right kind of target—Carver will arrange a death and make it look like an accident. On this most recent assignment, however, his world is ripped apart when he’s suddenly being hunted by the very powers that hired him.

The story opens on August 31, 1997, and Carver is called to Paris to eliminate a Pakistani terrorist. Receiving instructions from his usual contact, he shows up at the pre-determined spot and causes the radical’s black Mercedes to crash in an underpass. Immediately, however, Carver knows something is very wrong. There are other assassins involved and, what’s more, they’re now after him. As he summons all his survival instincts to stay ahead of his pursuers, he soon learns he unwittingly played a part in an obscene execution, and now he’s a loose end the puppetmasters can’t afford to live.

With a very satisfying debut novel, author Tom Cain (an award-winning British journalist) breaches the genre with sure-footed performance. While Accident Man stays within the tradition of Ludlum as Cain throws Carver—and us—into a hotbed of international conspiracy and triple-crosses, into the back rooms of rival intelligence agencies and evil bedfellows, what makes the story so fresh is how it wraps itself around a real-life accident that shook the world and suggests there were deliberate forces behind the tragedy.