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This is the first outing for ex-Royal Military Policeman, now turned bodyguard, Ryan Lock and his friend, Tyrone Johnson. I first met them in the second book in the series, DEAD LOCK, but was sufficiently taken with Lock as a character to be drawn to this one as well. Ryan Lock is the head of security for pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, Meditech, and it's his job to ensure that an animal rights demonstration outside the company's headquarters in New York on Christmas Eve doesn't get out of hand. Nicholas Van Straten, Chief Executive Officer of Meditech surprises everyone by announcing that as of midnight that night, the company would no longer be testing its products on animals. That should have diffused the simmering tension in the air, but unfortunately, someone isn't playing nicely and, moments later, the spokesman for demonstrators is shot dead by an unknown assassin. In the subsequent melee, his wife is also killed and Lock's attempt to catch the killer fails. Shortly afterwards, Lock's loyalty to Meditech is compromised when the young son of Richard Hulme, one of their chief scientists – who has just tendered his resignation – is kidnapped but Lock is ordered to have nothing to do with the case in spite of a direct appeal for help from the boy's father. Lock isn't very good at taking orders, especially when they come from the CEO's obnoxious son, Stafford, so he investigates anyway and soon finds himself in an increasingly murky world of experiments on humans as well as animals. There's nothing terribly complicated about Sean Lock as a main character, but he's well-drawn enough to be enjoyable and his relationship with friend and fellow Meditech employee, Tyrone Johnson, is sparky and amusing. The descriptions of the inside workings of a pharmaceutical giant hopefully don't bear too much of a resemblance to reality, but I don't think the book is any the worse for that. The narrative has a refreshingly simple style and doesn't get bogged down in extraneous detail. It's also pleasantly free of the sort of multiple point of view shifts that I'm starting to find very tiresome. I'd categorize this as a simple story reasonably well told and I enjoyed it. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, September 2010
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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