Tag: food

Neil Staley, The Warrior Gene (Kindle 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77776478-the-warrior-gene?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_31

Apex Labs agents Reg Thompson and Harry Caine are on a security stake-out, and a Fed from the FBI, Joshua Smith, is on a case nearby. He introduces himself, then shoots them in the head.
Back at the lab, Dr Alex Bishop’s boss Henry Drexler calls him to take a look at Batch DD-401A. ‘incomplete data utility’. Yet the client is moving forward the launch of Phase One.
A rhesus monkey named Jimmy is injected with ‘the Icarus particle’, and the moneymen watch as Jimmy viciously destroys an uninjected monkey.
There are numerous characters and minor inter-woven plotlines—the secret commemorative reward in the box, James Devlin’s promotion and abduction by his father and Blakenstock, two security agents murdered outside Alex’s lodgings, Mrs Galasky’s witness statement, the investigation against the religious cult leader, the fire at the lab, the flash drive and the other-worldly voice, Audrey’s backstabbing, the Mamluks and The Overwatch in the desert, Harun the Invisible Light—and that’s only up to chapter 16. At the final hour the ritual in the desert, Klick’s abusive religious cult and the warrior gene storylines converge.
The multiplicity of characters makes it hard to keep track—my brain protested at being introduced to a whole new set of characters in chapter 20. The ‘head-hopping’ (switching of Points of View) may be confusing, but it adds intrigue and gives the reader a chance to piece things together without having everything explained.
This novel is brilliant at creating suspense, using various skilful techniques as well as the old cliff-hanger. The science appears spot on—indeed, MAO-A has been called the ‘warrior gene’. The dialogue includes a perfect comeback to ‘age before beauty’—‘assholes before angels’.
I couldn’t understand the timeline of: James and his father’s boss Blakenstock giving him a big promotion, Blakenstock catching him in flagrante with a woman, and his massage (‘two hours later’ than the in flagrante). And what was the ‘giant fist smashing the building to the ground’ on page 161? And after Alex knew how evil the code was, why did he still want to save it?
The Concept—a techno/detective thriller involving the so-called ‘warrior gene’ is great. This follows in the tradition of techno-thrillers about scientifically engineered super-soldiers (Frank Herbert, Dune; Robert A Heinlein, Starship Troopers; Jeff Vintar, ‘Hardwired’ [iRobot]) and borrows the elite troop of Mamluks guarding secrets in the desert from ‘The Mummy’, the hole in the centre of the ceiling from ‘The Fifth Element’ and the ‘bloodline’ idea from The Da Vinci Code—all tropes too good to exclude.
The action is well paced using scene-setting and dialogue; the final chapters are a rollercoaster of excitement with a marvellous twist at the end. It would make a great action film.
This review first appeared in Reedsy Discovery.

S. W. Perry, The Sinner’s Mark (Corvus 2023)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74836672-the-sinner-s-mark

Elizabethan mystery full of period character

Nicholas Shelby, the queens’ physician, is summoned. Queen Elizabeth is fading but is nevertheless still interested in ‘young men with good calves and passable looks’.

Shelby’s father is accused of distributing a seditious tract, and he is determined to clear his name. One of the suppliers of ingredients for wife Bianca’s simples, Aksel Leezen, has willed to her his house in the Steelyard. There, Leezen has left plaster casts of bones—écorché models, for studying anatomy, explains Nicholas—and a gruesome wooded effigy of a dead girl with half a face. Three young boys go missing.

An old war-buddy arrives—his marvellous name is Petrus Eusebius Schenk.

As Shakespeare’s players act the assassination of Julius Caesar, actors in another plot are laying dastardly plans. As well as the nods to the Gunpowder Plot, which would happen five years after the events in this story, there are bits that were inspired by real occurrences in Elizabethan London.

Dialogue is good, but we don’t really hear the voices of the characters. The Voice is that of omniscient narrator.

This is sixth in Perry’s Elizabethan Jackdaw Mysteries series, and we know Nicholas, Bianca, Rose and Ned from the earlier books. Their characters are further developed here, and necessary backstory is well handled.

The plot develops languidly, and the slow pace allows for character development and scene-setting and gives one a feeling of the period, when even a trip across London required a horse ride, a wherry across the river, a stay in an inn.

Another element comes across as true to the period—the schizophrenic and precarious nature of the religious ups and downs and the shifting goalposts on what was considered heresy. The character Ned voices the experience of someone newly inspired by revolutionary Protestant sermons, and Schenk’s zealotry is believable.

This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.