Sunday 8 November 2020

Shadow (Marc Dane #4) by James Swallow.

 Shadow is the fourth book in the Marc Dane series but can be read as a stand-alone. This time Marc Dane and his workmate Lucy Keyes are on the quest to stop a bioweapon being deployed by a far right extremist political group.


Shadow follows on from the other books in this series and is more of the same. More bad guys, more guns and slaughter plus the continuity of previous characters from earlier novels. Having read each book in the series things are all sounding quite familiar. Even with a gap between reading each novel, James will stoke your memory with highlights from earlier books.


James wrote this novel before Covid-19 and it is creepy that the featured bioweapon is a variant developed from the Marburg virus which can be found among fruit bats. Also research has gone into weaponizing the Marburg virus and sadly Dr. Nikolai Ustinov died from the virus after accidentally infecting himself while injecting guinea pigs with the Marburg virus for the Soviet biological weapons program.


I enjoyed reading about the technical skills used within Shadow but again was bored with all the fighting and discharged firearms. However, I found Shadow to be a GOOD 4 star read that reminded me that a terrorist threat could be lurking around every corner of the globe. The relationship between Marc and Lucy has slowly developed with each novel and I wondered if maybe it would become physical until I read…


He lay down next to her and pulled closer, until they were side by side. She didn’t object. Lucy knew as well as he did that the fire wouldn’t be enough to stave off the cold, even out of the wind. They would have to conserve what body heat they could as well. ‘Don’t get handsy,’ she told him. ‘Break your fingers.’


...So maybe next time then!


Shadow was written in 2019 and is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook.

No comments:

Post a Comment