Tom Fletcher was formerly a police detective (in 'Corn Dolls') and then a private eye (in 'Steel Witches'). In this, the third and apparently final book in the trilogy, he is living a self-sufficient lifestyle on a small farm in Cambridgeshire, complete with apple orchard and beehives. His life, with his wife and two little children, seems almost perfect. This is the world of Patrick Lennon, though, and this peace is shattered when a TV film maker is found shot dead at a nearby army barracks. The TV man was making a documentary about anti-heroin operations in Afghanistan, and so the Ministry of Defence media team are keen to write his death off as suicide.
The Military Police - in the form of Captain Stef Maguire - believe there is a link between the film maker's research and Tom Fletcher himself. Not only the MPs, but also a number of vicious men from the heroin-dealing crime underworld. Although he tries to resist being drawn in, Fletcher has to fight back to protect his family and his new life. The book builds up to a rapid series of violent confrontations, with each one seeming to be the last barrier to be crossed, until a phenomenal last battle between Fletcher and his allies - Captain Maguire among them - and the criminals they have uncovered.
This is the kind of book that keeps you turning pages, partly through the excitement of the story, but also out of fear for the characters you like and want to survive. Fletcher is at his most charismatic yet (and very fit, my girlfriend points out) and it is fascinating to see him having finally settled down with Cathleen, his long-term lover and muse. Cathleen herself is more fully presented than in the previous books, and the way the unfolding crisis hits her is very tenderly drawn. For me, Stef Maguire is a haunting character too - slightly unstable (like all of Lennon's other major female leads) but so likeable (and fit, by the way).
The action in Cut Out is split between Afghanistan, where the army are gearing up for the big anti-heroin push, and scenes in England including the Fens, London and a yacht on the east coast owned by a heroin gangster. I really liked the way Lennon winds up the tension in each scene and the very fast pace, it really charges along like a bullet train (after some slightly drawn out scenes in the first quarter which raise the paranoid atmosphere).
This is a very far-sighted book. It portrays the MOD as cynically using spin and media subterfuge to present their version of events, something we read increasingly about in the press. Without giving anything away, at the heart of the book there is an idea about the war in Afghanistan which is simple but incredibly controversial.
So a very up to date, very fast, imaginative and sexy thriller.