Run - Jeff Abbott

It’s certainly not difficult to see the comparison to The Bourne Identity in Jeff Abbott’s new thriller – secret CIA agencies operating to cross purposes and causing major havoc in the world of international terrorism, with no accountability for their actions. Abbott’s a good writer for this kind of material, achieving the same immediacy and kinetic energy within the first few pages of the book and creating an incredibly tense situation. There’s a difference however – Abbott makes it credible.

Not too credible (our heroes manage to shrug off a number of bullet wounds quite manfully to get on with the task in hand), but by viewing the situation from a number of different perspectives, Run presents a wide view of the motivations of each of the parties involved, and in the process shows that there is no clear line that can be drawn between the good guys and the bad guys. Everyone is involved in murky activity outside of accepted legal and moral laws, where good and bad are relative terms.

That makes Abbott’s thriller a little bit more relevant than the Bourne films, taking the activities of the CIA, IRA terrorists and Arab militants and tying it into the current global climate of home security and lucrative business interests generated by war and terrorism. It’s all held together by the author’s terse, lean and dramatically dynamic prose, which wastes not a word or scene. At any point, you’re never more than a page away from another major revelation or explosive situation. Brilliant.