My Review:: Misdirection by Martin Link

Misdirection by Martin  Link
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Misdirection - A classic sleight of hand or rope a dope. A trick pulled by master magicians to make us believe that magic is real or con men to pull of grandiose heists. In Martin Link's book it is the latter. A scheme, a conniving plot to steal $48 million from a newly launched, highly touted security truck under the noses of the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the whole world: MI 5 & FBI.

Talking too much about the plot will give it away and I would like the reader of this review to enjoy the experience of reading the book for no plot outlines. For a debut novel it is reflective of the research done by author that it does not seem outlandish. The technology is sophisticated but certainly not out of the realm of today's modern world.

Some of the jarring things that I noticed was that the book tends to jump around a bit with the characters. The lead character is introduced and immediately all his colleagues as well, the readers are just expected to know them all which is a bit of high expectation as the lead character has not been established himself. The background for the characters, the wheres, the whos and the hows are missing in the character definition, but this could be because the author maybe planning to reveal more about the characters in the later novels.

The interaction and the camaraderie between the characters is natural, but again I came off with the feeling that everybody knows everybody here, right from the start. Well there is certainly too much of coffee and food involved in every meeting. The lead character is certainly addicted to them to be sipping it all the time.

The plot is impeccable, none of the shenanigans pulled by the con men seems over the top. The situations flows one after the other and the cat and mouse game between the cops and robbers is titillating.

I would definitely read the next book in the series involving Lucas Norton. My only feedback to the author would be to spend some more time in character buildup. At 165 pages it is almost a novella, a few more pages with the backstory for some of the important characters including the robbers would have definitely helped.

I breezed through the book but due to the lack of backstory could not really connect with either the cops or the robbers and that IMO is a shame because it would lifted this into a straight 5 star story.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of the book courtesy of Martin Link in exchange for discussing it freely and fairly for the Book Of The Month (BOTM) challenge on the GoodReads group A Good Thriller.