Raglan is an ex-French Foreign Legion soldier, invalided out after his squad is compromised on an operation and he is badly wounded. Years later he is drawn back into the shadowy world of mercenaries and black ops, resulting in him entering a Russian penal colony to extract retribution and then try to get out.

This an all-action book with a heavy focus on the tricks and tools of the fighting man's trade. Raglan is an interesting and intriguing character, which is sometimes hidden behind his indestructible, knows everything, can do everything appearance on the page.

Actually pretty good read for macho thriller lovers and well written. ( )

Former French Legionnaire Raglan is living in retirement in France when a junior MI6 operative makes contact. His former colleague and friend has been kidnapped in London. Raglan drops everything to help in the search for Carter. Although he finds his friend, he dies and so do several others – this now becomes a vengeance mission for Raglan. The only problem is that in order to take out the perpetrator he needs to get inside a remote high security prison in the isolated north of Russia.
This isn’t normally the sort of book I would read but was offered a review copy through Lovereading. In fact there is a huge market for this type of action thriller and of it’s genre it is actually very good. the set pieces are not too often to become stale but are suitably violent, there is a cliched love interest (the most unsuccessful part) and a solid understanding of time and place. The frustrations of driving throughLondon traffic are surprisingly well handled and a great contradiction to the remoteness of the Russian sections. There is a sly sense of humour at work here so, although not necessarily my book of choice, I actually found myself betting caught up in an exhilarating ride. ( )