Customer Reviews

The Deceived

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Brett Battles THE DECIEVER is a great book, fast paced, exciting and full of wonderful details about how spies do their business. It's got all the hallmarks of a great thriller including exotic locales, neat gadgets, believable violence, people who aren't whom they appear to be and, oh yes, a little bit of sex just to keep us interested.

The plot, well, the plot, as is often the case in books like this, doesn't really matter. For the first three hundred or so of its three hundred fifty-eight pages no one, including the characters, have any idea what's happening and neither will you...fortunately it doesn't matter in the least, just go along for the roller coaster ride but watch out for that last dip - it's a lulu! We first met Jonathan Quinn in THE CLEANER and I for one am thrilled to renew his acquaintance. In THE DECIEVER one of Quinn's few real friends is killed and Quinn sets off in search of his missing girlfriend. Along the way Quinn and his team, Orlando, an electronics expert who is a match for Quinn in every way, and his apprentice Nate chase after the girlfriend with stops in Houston, Washington D. C., San Francisco and Singapore. I won't give you the details but there's some great chase scenes, a few gunfights, some second story work and lot's of interesting details of spy craft that will keep your eyes glued to this book well after your bedtime.

Brett Battles has a bright future as a thriller writer assuming he doesn't lose his center. I sincerely hope to see many more books featuring Jonathan Quinn but the ending of THE DECEIVER leaves an opening to take this series in a very different direction moving into the realm of Robert Ludlum rather then continue charting his own very different direction. This, in my opinion, would be a mistake. The Quinn books do indeed exist in a byzantine world of spies, assassins and conspiracies but they're more about the process and tradecraft then they are about the details of the plotters and their plots. Quinn reminds me of Richard Stark's Parker, a cool professional who overcomes every obstacle regardless of the odds not because he's a superhuman but because he simply knows how (and shares the fascinating details with us, the readers).

Brett Battles created an excellent, unique story featuring Jonathan Quinn. He is a freelance professional 'Cleaner' - someone who comes in and cleans up messes for folks - making bodies disappear - cleaning up scenes that if the authorities were involved, they would cordon off and search for clues to 'whodunit'.
Quinn is called to clean a job and finds the person he needs to have disappear is one of his friends in the business that saved his life. He feels an obligation to this person to find out why this happened.
So starts a fast paced sequel to The Cleaner. Many of the same characters as The Cleaner, Nate, the apprentice in training with Quinn, Orlando, the beautiful Oriental lady whom Quinn is attracted to - and a slew of agents in the shadowy world of cleaning up someone elses 'messes'.
This story takes the characters all over the globe, and Quinn does a lot of digging and heart searching to find out who killed his friend.
It may have been about 30 pages too long, but it is still an excellent sequel to The Cleaner.

The Deceived had me at page one. I found it hard to put down. The writing is clear and direct. The action is fast and furious. The story has plenty of surprises and unexpected twists. The descriptions of the locations made me feel like I was there. l'm a picky reader, but this book totally hooked me. This was my first read of a book by Brett Battle's and now I can't wait to read his other books!

WARNING: Do not start this book unless you have a clear schedule. It will be virtually impossible for you to put this down once you're past the first page. Battles' second entry in the Jonathan Quinn series is a terrific thriller full of action, personality, and plot twists. The pacing is lightning-quick, and the dialogue cracks like a whip.

Highly recommended...but don't start reading at a traffic light!

Three Brett Battles novels and three one sitting thrillers isn't bad at all! As a matter of fact, I turned off my telephone's ringer and ignored knocks at the door while reading this one. Indeed, the plots and the villians are rather James Bondian, but Jonathan Quinn isn't. He does get on the wrong track imperiling his apprentice Nate and girl friend Orlando more than once, but this isn't due as much to his flaws as to the flaws in the system. Like imagine playing chess if some of your pieces become your opponent's pieces, or some of you opponent's suddenly are yours. It would be rather complicated, no? You'll notice that I'm not giving away much of the plot here. Others have done that, and anyway, I feel the less you know what to expect from this novel, the better. I will warn you that this doesn't quite fall into the category of realistic spy fiction and if you don't find fun in rather grandiose and unlikely conspiracies, you just might not like the Jonathan Quinn books. As for me, I find them to be fantastic fun and give them my highest recommendation.

In this second novel in the Jonathan Quinn series, he is given a job to dispose of a body, but the body in this case is someone he knows. He feels an obligation that goes beyond the job, to track things back and find out what happened. Events lead him into a murky world of intrigue in both the US and overseas. There are some carryover characters from the last novel, "The Cleaner," but also some new people involved. Some people would rather have Quinn stay out of their lives. He could get you killed.

This becomes one of those mysteries about who is doing what to whom, where you have to join Quinn in figuring out just who are the bad guys, and exactly what is going down. Heroes tend to survive, although perhaps a bit battered, as the plot goes through a few surprising twists.

The novel is well written, but be aware that it does have substantial violence. Quinn can make people disappear. That's what he does for a living. People who know about it are not likely to talk because talk can be bad for a lot of people's buniness.

OK, apologies to Brett Battle fans in advance. I realize I'm going against the crowd on this one - twelve-out-of-twelve five star reviews is impressive, and was certainly enough to get me to spring for sixteen-and-change and more importantly, five or six hours of my time. I'd never heard of Brett Battles, had never read "The Cleaner", and was excited about adding a hot new thrill writer to my list. If I were to be charitable, I'd say that Battles and "The Deceived" is the funniest thriller/action parody since Maxwell Smart. Problem is, Battles is being dead serious in this melodramatic yawner of a "thriller" with all the depth and intelligence of a made-for-TV movie. The steely-eyed "cleaner", Jonathan Quinn, is about as believable - and intimidating - as Howdy Doody, while the dialog - even more flat and cardboard than the cast - makes that TV movie look like Hitchcock by comparison. It's forced, it's banal, and it's built on a themes so old that when told in stone tablet they were already feeling tired.

So our hero, Quinn, finds the body of an old pal and CIA operative, Steve Markoff, rotting in a shipping container that Quinn was dispatched to "clean-up". And clean up he does, but he's pissed, and in addition to avenging his dead bud, he at the same time will track down Markoff's missing girlfriend, obviously in danger as well. From that point on, a good portion of the book is consumed by pretty much everyone who crosses Quinn's path telling him to back off and forget Markoff, followed by Quinn's stoic response that runs something like "a man's got to do what a man's got to do." Over, and over, and over again. This tedium is broken by multiple competing teams of supposedly elite hit squads chasing Quinn down, but in their inability to pin down the undermanned Quinn, who we are told (again, repeatedly) is out of his element as a tracker (remember - he's only a "cleaner"), they come off looking less like Delta Force and more like a match between the Three Stooges and The Keystone Cops. Yeah, there's an explosion or two, some people get killed, a few more maimed, but the action serves only as a welcome diversion from the juvenile babbling between the characters. This is one of those books that you keep wishing will get better - that clever plot twists and good storytelling will trump flat characters and lame dialog - but trust me here - it only gets worse.

Look, I get no pleasure panning a book. I'd much rather be singing the praises of Ken Bruen's brutally violent poetic prose, of Danial Silva's headlines-brought-to life, Carl Hiaasen's caustic razor sharp wit, Duane Swiercynski's off-the-wall heroes and outrageously creative escapades, of Cormac McCathy's pathos ripped and twisted and reassembled, or James Lee Burke's moody and atmospheric, faintly supernatural, tales of the bayou. This is none of those - not even close - so take this as simply as a red flag - a warning not to be 'deceived" as I was hoping to find a new author with some chops and a hero to match.

Meanwhile, I'm still looking.

Book two in the Jonathan Quinn series treats us to another fast action, world-wind tour with Jonathan Quinn, his apprentice Nate and long time friend, Orlando. Quinn decides to go against his instincts when he investigates the death of his former colleague and friend, Markoff while globetrotting for Markoff's missing girlfriend, Jenny. Brett Battles does another marvelous job of drawing us in from beginning to end. The Deceived is definitely not short on action or twists and turns. Good luck trying to guess the outcome of this thriller. -Suspense Magazine

Superb writing. Brett Battles write similarly to many of my favorite authors: Martin Cruz Smith, James Lee Burke, Jonathan Kellerman, and Barry Eisler. I look forward to whatever he's writing next!

I read two to three novels a week and 95 percent of them are in the mystery/thriller genre. All the novels are from the top writers and I enjoy almost every one. However, this book is one of the best I have read this year. Jonathan Quinn is an excellent protagonist and, like the other reviewer, I think I'm in love. This book has everything you would want in a thriller, from great characterization, unique and riveting plot, and of course, believable twists and turns. I simply am going to have a hard time waiting for the next book.