Customer Reviews

The Rhythm Section

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As the jaded consumer of hundreds of thrillers I'm something of a tough audience, but Mark Burnell's debut novel was a genuine page turner and I was very impressed with it. Yes, the plot bears more than a passing resemblance to "La Femme Nikita" and yes, the book is a little too long and drags a bit in the middle, but Stefanie Patrick is much too interesting a heroine and Burnell much too good a storyteller to let small quibbles get in the way of "a crackling good yarn." The book is about how a drug-taking prostitute a few steps from her final fix is transformed into the dreaded Petra Reuter, unstoppable international assassin. There is plenty of sex and violence and a plethora of repulsive terrorists - in short, enough to keep the average thriller fan happily engaged for hours. I'm looking forward to Mr. Burnell's next foray with bated breath.

This highly readable thriller closely parallels that fine movie 'la femme nikita': down-and-out junkie gets turned into government assassin. The author does a good job of getting under the skin of the heroine, exposing the vulnerability under the shell of the ostensibly cold-blooded killer, and also exploring the dimensions of international terrorism. Well-written and action-packed.

A good premise used successfully in La Femme Nikita but well-executed in this book. Plot is good, with unexpected twists and turns and in fact hits a little too close to home!!Generally well written.
However, suspend your discriminating thought powers (drug addict prostitute becomes a super slueth and has epiphany re revenge). The lead character is too hokey and her characterization is quite muddled and inconsistent. The plot devices work only if you believe the good guys and the bad guys are selectively stupid, overlooking the obvious and our gal is not.

I read this after seeing the author mentioned in the Economist a while back... The social misfit turned assassin seems to be a little cliché these days (Le femme nikita/ Greg Rucka's: Queen and Country series/ etc.) but it works for fiction stories fairly well.
What I found interesting is that Burnell wrote this book in 1999. In it he describes a fictional Al Qaeda (AQ) cell planning to hijack commercial aircraft to take out it's targets (commercial buildings/government locations). Why is that of interest? Burnell is writing about this in 1999 - and he's about dead on to a later event that will shape American lives for the next two decades. Per the 9/11 Commission Report, no one assessed that terrorists might utilize commercial aircraft as makeshift missiles. Too bad Burnell wasn't on the payroll.
Hindsight 20/20 - I wish those analysts/agents/case officers working down on Pennsylvania Ave and in McLean would have been read this book. Maybe that subliminal idea would have made it's way into a Red Cell hypothesis.

Anti-heroine Stephanie Patrick, orphaned two years ago by a plane crash, survives from day to day in the twilight existence of a London prostitute. She makes no excuses for her choices, which are her own way of cauterizing what's left of her feelings. Into this emotional wasteland comes freelance journalist Proctor, with the news that her family's death was no accident but a terrorist act which the government covered up. The perpetrator is walking around free in London.

There's nothing trite or contrived in this novel. Stephanie is as hostile to Proctor as a wild animal in a trap. Her transformation from self-destructing prostitute to hyper-disciplined government assassin follows a twisting and unpredictable path. Every step is hard-won, fascinating, and a product of her unusual character colliding with a hard world and refusing to take any more easy options.

The obvious comparison, "La Femme Nikita", was a fine concept but a lame story. There was always something hopelessly unconvincing about an agency choosing a junkie on death row for its latest recruit, and about the junkie's motivation for cooperating once she's saved her own life.

Mark Burnell's answer is an alternative, character-driven story. The protagonist owns her own choices, even the most nihilistic and self-destructive ones, and she never allows herself any self-pity or any illusions. The result is far more convincing and dramatic.

Judging from other reviews, this novel is not for everybody. I can't comment on the realism of counter-terrorist ops, although a lot seems to depend on her operating alone and turning the tables with combat skills when she's outnumbered. In that sense, it's a bit escapist.

The author makes much of the Jekyll-and-Hyde tensions between Stephanie and her other, purpose-made personalities, and this becomes the main theme of the sequels. But to me, it's her transformation from reactive to active that makes "The Rhythm Section" a standout. It sits on my top shelf of favourite novels, alongside "Kara's Game" by Gordon Stevens, also highly recommended.

I was enticed into reading Burnell's The Rhythm Section by The Economist, which chose it as one of its "Books of the Year." After 400 pages of thin, thriller fare, I wondered what on earth led them to give the book such an honor. Unlike the best of this genre, the author here teaches us nothing, gives no impression of having been privy to real counter-terrorism ops and seems to have gotten all his facts about the world and politics from the pages of The Guardian.

Then it came. In the closing pages of the book, the protagonist faces the baddie Palestinian terrorist she has been pursuing and he delivers a little speech right out of PLO Central Casting: the Mossad killed my family, Israeli soldiers raped my sister while my mother watched (then raped her too); my uncle was a Palestinian Gandhi (before Israelis killed him). America paid for it all, blah, blah, blah.

I read on, hoping against hope the heroine would deliver a few verbal stiletto thrusts at this nonsense before dispatching the terrorist. Alas, no. She accepts his narrative straight up, sees in it parallels to her own suffering and, at last, I realize that The Economist recommended this book as a continuation of its own anti-Israel editorial slant. Either that or it must have been a very bad year for fiction.

I read this book, motivated by a review in The Economist, 10 years ago. That its climax (the book was published in 1999) involves Middle-Eastern suicide bombers and a plot to hijack 12 planes was prescient. The author creates unique characters and, for the time, situations. The central personage, Stephanie Patrick, is roused from her existence as a substance-using/abusing prostitute who is fleeing a past with no future by a journalist doing a followup to the plane crash (which she narrowly avoided) that killed Stephanie's family. The journalist is murdered, she seeks revenge only to be abducted by a shadow entity, Magenta House, which does all the dirty--and deadly--work other government agencies prefer to avoid. She is then trained as a secret agent to kill quickly, even unquestioningly. Her assignments take her all over: Brazil, the United States, Paris. One important note: The head hijacker, toward the novel's end, explains his motivations to her. They are not religious; he is not seeking martyrdom. What he wants is vindication against a west that has treated the Middle East and its citizens shabbily, often in favour of Israel. Commentators have advanced this alienation and anger as a major reason for 9/11 and related terrorist activities, and though this theory is arguable, it does help to make "The Rhythm Section" a singular, still timely thriller

I thought that this was one of the best thrillers in years. It is far more thoughtful and intelligent than the typical techno-thriller where there's a lot of killing. Yes, there is action and tension, but this book stayed in my mind a lot longer than almost all other thrillers and most "serious" novels because of the emotional appeal of the main character. The book is as well written and the characters as well developed as any critically acclaimed novel. Like fellow British thriller writer Charles Cumming and American spy novelist Charles McCarry, Burnell is showing why the espionage novel is advancing to the level of literature faster than mystery writers ever will.

I started to read this book taking a chance on it. Let me tell you that it had me grasped and wanting more. I got into the storyline and really felt feeelings for a character I knew wasn't real. As great as this book was the next one has me grasped even more in Chameleon. I am beginning to wonder if Mr Burnell is writing about a fictional character, or rather a real one that he knew once. That's how real and intense this book is. Not to mention the foray into terrorism in the US and attempts that have been thwarted 'somehow'.

This book should have been a lot longer or a lot shorter. The first 3/4 of the book was devoted to developing the main character, but with her multiple identities, the switch from one to the other was jarring at times. There was too little background development of how she fit into each identity. The italicized passages changing the point of view to her internal thoughts tried to smooth over this flaw, but it failed. If more time had been spent exploring these identities, the book would have been longer, but it would have been smoother. On the other hand, this plot device could have been discarded entirely for a better, but shorter, read. Once the book got started, however, the last hundred pages or so were great.