Assassins Hunted

Femme fatale

Author
British born. Now has Australian citizenship too. No relation of Chrissie or Little Pattie as far as I am aware, but she did play guitar in a band at one stage, work as a film extra, and freelance as a radio presenter and producer for the BBC, before she turned her hand to writing. Multiple series of crime and spy novels, and a number of standalone thrillers. Her best known character is British detective Kay Hunter, but she's written a series based around a male detective too, and spy novels with both male and female protagonists. This is one of the latter. As suggested by the title, the protagonist is a female English assassin.

In brief
Eva Delacourt has been in hiding for three years after an operation that saw her spook BF gunned down in a Prague street. When we meet her, she's living in a gated community in Cyprus with a six-year-old boy we assume to be her son. Bad guys intent on punching their tickets break in on page one, but our gal and the kid lock themselves in the panic room (or footlocker) and blow the place up. Then it's back in Berlin for a debrief followed by a stay in a hotel till they work out what to do with her next. She has a bad feeling about the hotel, largely because she spots an assassin she knows, sitting in the bar, having a drink, bold as brass. What's more, she thought she'd killed him several years previous. Cue circuitous escape with kid and computer nerd from her agency in tow, first to Prague, where she meets up with a retired assassin (except there's no such thing), whom she trusts (again, no such thing I would have thought but she must be a better judge of character than me). People try to kill them. Other stuff happens. There's a leak back at HQ in London and he's in cahoots with a Polish ex-con with aspirations to bioterrorism. The good guys (I use that term loosely) go on a road trip: Italy, then France or maybe the other way around, then Switzerland, and eventually Poland where she and her pals tear sh*t up.

Writing
Crisp, fast paced, twisty plot that tests the limits of credibility. Eva is quite well developed as Ms A's female protagonists usually are. The blokes not so much.

Bottom line
Good holiday read. Book #2 is due out in March 2021.