Matthew Dunn - Spartan

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Poorly written and unconvincing

I do not like to be too critical, especially of first novels, but I'm afraid I thought this was very disappointing. The biographical details make it plain that the author was a skilled and successful MI6 officer. Sadly, he is not a skilled author and Spartan is clunkily-written, full of absurd characters doing implausible things and in the end tedious, over-long and forgettable.

The protagonist is Will Cochrane, supposedly MI6's sole ultra-secret super-spy, the "only one of his generation to have survived the brutal training," who is given a mission to prevent an Iranian intelligence officer from launching a devastating attack on the West. In an attempt to create a modern-day James Bond, the author seems to have created a fantasy of someone he would like to have been, and it's just ludicrous, I'm afraid. For example, Cochrane is shot three times in the stomach, has a bit of basic surgery, goes sraight back to work and a few days later is scaling the outside of a three-storey building without so much as a twinge. He is, we keep being told, utterly deadly and completely ruthless but also stunningly kind-hearted, empathetic and noble. His handsomeness goes without saying. And so on. And, naturally, the mission becomes highly personal in oh-so-many ways. Now, I am all in favour of slightly silly spy stories (I enjoy Spooks very much, for example, so my credentials in this area are pretty good) but there really are limits and this exceeds all of them.

The prose and storytelling are horribly clunky, and much of the dialogue is simply dreadful. People spend a lot of time telling each other things they already know in stilted language, or saying things like "I need you to do what you do best and what no-one else is capable of. This will be your toughest and most critical mission. You must succeed despite the odds against your doing so," and "I fear what effect this will have on your already ruthless psyche." (Did I mention that he's ruthless?) There's an awful lot of this sort of terrible dialogue. The narrative is a little better written but it's still stilted, implausible and prone to cliché. For example, people smile while their eyes remain cold and penetrating, and at one point Will observes someone and in that one glance he "saw the man's humour, his deviousness, his business-sharp intellect, and his wisdom. He also saw hope and sorrow in the man's eyes." Well, of course he did - who wouldn't? The book is full of this sort of stuff. And as for the potential lovers expressing the powerful chemisry between them with lines like "You have hesitation in your eyes. Are you wary of my intentions toward you now?" "No, because I can control any such intentions"...

Enough. I am sorry to be so critical, but I genuinely think this is a very poor book. The publishers claim that it is "nerve-shredding and stunningly authentic." It isn't. If you want a book on a similar theme which fits that description try Gerald Seymour's A Deniable Death instead