SMOKED
by Patrick Quinlan
Smoked Headline, £10; 356pp

GOOD HEROES ARE hard to come by. They can also be hard to live with, which is why bad guys with a soft streak are sometimes so appealing.

Barry Eisler’s John Rain is a classic example, a half-American, half-Japanese professional assassin who tries to take out only nasty cases, has a rule against wasting women and children and a guilt complex from having eliminated his girlfriend’s father.

That minor detail having — understandably — soured their relationship, he has since sought solace with an Israeli seductress, professionally named Delilah, whose speciality is setting up marked men.

In One Last Kill, Rain’s dilemma is knowing whether or not he has become another of Delilah’s marks when his soft spot for kids causes him to mess up a hit job in a Manila men’s room, a job for which she had recommended him to her Israeli employers.

What makes Rain particularly credible as a character is that — unlike the likes of Lee Child’s superhuman Jack Reacher — he is not only psychologically vulnerable but obviously getting older from book to book, now embarrassed to use a knife when once bare hands sufficed.

The introduction of his loud-mouthed, red-neck veteran sniper partner Dox has not only helped him out but also given the dialogue some snappy opportunities for tough-guy humour, especially in the bordellos of Bangkok.

Eisler is a dab hand at turning out well-crafted, fast-moving plots as rich in character as they are in exotic oriental atmosphere, and there is a surprise for Rain at the end that may melt his soft centre even further.

If Eisler got a lot of early mileage out of giving his anti-hero the surname Rain, Patrick Quinlan may be playing the same game calling his own protagonist Smoke, with the excuse that as a nickname it’s better than his real name — Wally O’Malley.

Quinlan comes from a tough New York Irish family and makes the most of it. Despite being set in genteel Maine this is an unashamedly urban American tale of mayhem and murder with more than a few ironic twists and turns.

O’Malley is a bomb-maker by trade, an adjutant and quartermaster to the crime world who flips when he learns that one of his devices was used to down an airliner just to take out a single passenger.

Having killed his paymaster, taken the money and faked suicide, Smoke nonetheless finds his old allies out for his blood. If that weren’t enough, his girlfriend has problems with rapists who want to put her in home-made porn flicks.

Smoke himself is no hard man: middle-aged, with a game leg, more beaten up than beating, who relies on brain rather than brawn and ingenious booby traps, such as a Molotov cocktail light bulb.

Smoked is a first novel rich in characters lovingly drawn and mercilessly executed. Often literally. Gives the whole expression “character assassination” a brand new meaning.

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