Another pageturner in the Nick Stone series by Andy McNab. While not up to for instance "Fire Wall", it is still an excellent thriller, with a realistic background in the hawala system (see for instance http://www.gdrc.org/icm/hawala.html).Nice with a change of scene too, after many scenes in poor backwaters or djungles etc, we are suddenly in the glitzy French Riviera. Again, excellent scene descriptions that you actually enjoy reading, and plenty of humourous quips (like letting your chihuahas poop on the sidewalks). And I want one day to write a script where I can steal the scene of the silly hat competition as a comic relief in a thriller! But the silly hats is not only comic relief, it also illustrates the tediousness of field work, and how friendship can build even when you know you shouldn't etc. And, of course, it makes the ending even more tragic...And as before, this novel is also excellently structured. "Liberation Day" may seem heavy on the tediousness of preparation and surveillance. The wait, they prepare, it just goes on and on, and then the ending just explodes. And as before, the descriptions of field work is sometimes too detailed - yet absorbing! As one critic has written - at the core of McNab's fiction is non-fiction. You buy the realism of it!And of course, it is quite useful to have learned "the seven Ps" (p. 232): "Prior planning and preparation prevents piss-poor performance"! :)
Unfortunately the law of diminishing returns seems to be hitting Andy McNab’s Nick Stone series, and hitting it hard. While Chris Ryan’s rival Geordie Sharp stories remain simple and fresh, McNab seems to be wallowing in the mundane detail of his tales as he regales us with page after page of the boring, routine day-to-day existence of an ‘undercover operator’. This book’s set in the south of France, but the glamorous setting doesn’t really get a look in as Nick spends much of his time hiding in a bush, watching a sinister yacht. In regards to the bigger picture, this does have a workable story: it kicks off with a great attack on an African home, where our hero decapitates the villain in a gory manner, and it finishes with one hell of a violent climax involving immolation, shoot-outs, car chases and more. It’s just the plodding middle section of the book that goes nowhere; hundreds of pages explaining how our hero goes to the shops or just basically hangs out on a day-to-day basis does not a good story make. It’s not a great book. With judicious pruning, it could well have been, as there are traces of the old magic here and there, but, for me, Liberation Day is the worst in the series yet.
What do You think about Liberation Day (2004)?
Liberation day is the 5th book in the Nick Stone series. In this book nick is on the quest to get his American citizenship, but to get this he is sent on a "final" mission, to destroy and kill a certain target. After complete his mission and traveling back from his "holiday" his girlfriend is thereto greet him. But after a few hours of returning "home" all his problems start to begin, his was to be father-in-law told his girlfriend that he was working for the us government and that he was actual
—Oscar
