Cut Out [Kindle Edition]

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.

This is a thriller that's not only a page turner but long after I'd finished reading I was left thinking....about the army...about murders I read about in the papers...about relationships. Patrick Lennon manages to keep the atmosphere of menace going throughout the book and I never felt that I could see the ending coming. Best of all is the writing itself. He effortlessly conjures up images without relying on cliche. He has a style all of his own.

I'm a recent convert to Patrick Lennon's books. I think Cut Out is the best thriller I've read this year (maybe for a few years, though I am a big fan of Peter Temple as well). The story starts at great pace, when a TV film producer is found shot dead at an army barracks which has a history of bullying. The Military Police find that he was investigating the importing of heroin, and so the plot unfolds to include organised crime, corruption in the armed forces and the personal quest by one of the MPs to salvage her own reputation.

I loved the Tom Fletcher character in this book, as much as in the previous two. He is a tough guy, but is still a little vulnerable, desperate to keep his family safe. The way the army is presented is controversial, but I agree that many readers will recognise the "MOD spin machine" that we read about in the press. As with the other Lennon books, the big attractions are the pace, the very clever development of the plot, and the pervading atmosphere of menace which this writer does so very well. Any thriller lover will pick this book up and run with it.