Seventh thriller in the series about Charlie (Charlotte) Fox, former
soldier and current private bodyguard. Charlie's estranged father
turns up unexpectedly in the USA, and seems to be bent on professional
self-destruction under the eyes of the media. Why?
Well, the answer's pretty obvious really, and fortunately we're
not kept hanging around too long waiting for Charlie to catch up. But
after some early action there's a long slow burn of investigation of a
drug company with an experimental therapy that may be going horribly
wrong, or rather of attempts at investigation which mostly turn up
nothing. The action scenes feel deliberately spaced out through the
book, giving us just enough to keep us going to the next one; I wish
Sharp would simply admit that she's not very good at writing
non-action scenes, and stop using this padding.
Mostly this plot is an excuse to have Charlie's parents on stage for
most of the book, which one would hope might finally resolve some of
the issues between them and Charlie. And maybe this has happened, and
maybe it hasn't; things are pointing in a positive direction by the
end, particularly in terms of Charlie's father starting to understand
the sort of person she is and Charlie herself starting to grow up a
bit and accept that while he may be a pompous arsehole her father does
still turn up at her bedside when she's been shot… but Sharp's got
form for discarding welcome developments in future books in order to
tell the sort of story she prefers. I fear I'm losing my faith in her
willingness to fulfill the big promises she makes, because if Charlie
were actually happy then… actually, would that be so bad? Can't a
bodyguard be allowed to be happy rather than alternating "oh, I've
been shot, I hurt" with "oh, I have no emotional maturity, I will
agonise for ages over telling X about Y"?
It all goes by agreeably enough, but doesn't leave much in the way of
a lasting impression. Followed by Fourth Day.
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