Andy McNab revolutionised men’s fiction, being the first author that made action fiction feel real and raw. Mostly because his writing was largely based on reality. His first fictional book was called Remote Control and remains to this day one of the best books I have ever read. But that was in 1997.
Brute Force sets Nick Stone in familiar territory. Starting with the premise of an idyllic Christmas with a beautiful woman and her young stepdaughter. Of course this is Nick Stone and that lasts no time at all. He survives an attempt on his life and begins a search for his would be killers, going from Ireland to England, to Europe and beyond.
Having finished the story and looking back on what happened it did contain a lot of what I love about these books, but cannot escape from the fact I found it verging on tedious a great deal of the time. It was a book I got through and not a story that pulled me through the pages.
The problem being, there is nothing between the beginning and end that gives us any feeling that we are doing anything other than heading towards the next step that will inevitably take us to the showdown where Stone will confront the bad guy, and survive. At no time is there any sense of mystery, threat or urgency to anyone we care about in the story.
That said, the second half was by far better than the first. It is also written in the first perspective and Nick Stone’s dry outlook on the world is often very amusing, particularly at the beginning of this novel.
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