The Break Line

Starred review from October 22, 2018
British documentarian Brabazon (My Friend the Mercenary: A Memoir) makes his fiction debut with an adrenaline-charged thriller. Soon after Max McLean, who has been an off-the-books assassin for the British government for more than two decades, decides not to kill his target in Caracas, Venezuela, he receives another assignment. He must travel to Karabunda, a jungle outpost in northern Sierra Leone, and kill the white leader of an insurgent force without backup or access to the usual intel. Max poses as a doctor to scout the remote area, only to discover that the military has closed off the entire region, claiming a cholera outbreak. He learns, though, that the dead have been savaged, some dismembered or eviscerated, with human bite marks left on the bodies. Later, in Freetown, he recovers a message left for him by a comrade-in-arms with a phrase in Irish that translates as “kill them all.” Brabazon’s inventive violence, mix of combat styles, and slowly revealed truths will keep readers on the edge of their seats. Agent: Karolina Sutton, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

November 15, 2018
An assassin embarks on a mysterious mission.Brabazon sets his debut novel in the war-torn region of West Africa, an area he has also chronicled as a filmmaker and journalist (My Friend the Mercenary, 2011). His narrator is Max McLean, a supersoldier who does black ops for the British. Years ago his superiors trained him as an assassin because he was willing to follow orders without question--even orders to kill. They dubbed him "a legally sane psychopath." But now Max also insists that he has an uncompromising moral compass: "The most enduring thread of humanity I had left to hang on to was wrapped around...the certainty that the people I killed were bad people: their guilt served to expiate mine." Due to his pesky conscience, he botches a job in Caracas, but his superiors give him a chance to redeem himself. His new target is an unidentified white man in rural Sierra Leone. Information is scarce, but something strange is definitely afoot. (The last British agent sent to kill the mystery man went barking mad.) The rest of the story is fast-paced, has a good twist or two, and is incredibly violent. That's not unusual for the spy thriller genre, and neither are Brabazon's themes of duty versus conscience, loyalty versus betrayal. There's nothing wrong with replaying the classics, of course, but Brabazon has a tendency to state his themes rather than developing them through character and plot. Max thinks about weighty issues ("I never knew if he was driven by duty or friendship. I tacked between those two poles, lost in a sea of blood of my own spilling"), but his reflections don't ultimately change his behavior. Soon enough, he's spilling more.Plenty of action and violence but thematically unsatisfying.

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December 1, 2018
Max McLean is an assassin for British intelligence. His record is without blemish, except for one misjudgment. His latest assignment appears to be an unofficial punishment, though a probable suicide mission seems a bit harsh. He's directed to Sierra Leone, where rebel forces are slaughtering villagers. The ostensible mission is to root out and terminate the rebel leader, killing the snake by chopping off the head. McLean knows he's on his own; if the mission goes badly, there's no backup squad to extract him from the jungle and, in any event, no encrypted cell phone to request that backup. What he finds is that some of the rebels possess an ace in the hole: they are seemingly immune to pain and thus able to absorb bullets to the body without body armor. Only head shots work. McLean isn't sure what he's up against, but he knows he needs a plan right now. The author, a documentary filmmaker who has covered African civil wars from all sides of the conflicts, brings that experience to bear in this gruesome, exciting thriller, which boasts a plot with layers readers won't anticipate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)