No Way Out by Max Connor review: 'doesn’t quite tie together'
This tale of a British spy going rogue in California may feel a little cliched at times, but it’s dramatic enough to hold the attention, writes Rachel Mackie
British intelligence operative Josie Chapman is on her first mission in California, helping the FBI get eyes and ears into a sex trafficking and blackmail ring, when she senses something more is at play. Defying orders, she sticks around to do some more investigating and is eventually joined and aided by a retired Scottish agent called Macca. Together they try to bring to justice some corrupt cops and politicians, a drug lord, a sketchy hotel worker... you name it, they’re all going down.
Written by Max Connor, aka bestselling author Neil Lancaster, No Way Out is the second book in what will presumably become a series with Josie as its lead, but it does work as a standalone. There are a few hints and spoilers about what happened in the previous book, but you don’t have to have read that to follow along with this story.
Unfortunately, however, No Way Out is drowning in exposition. People all talk to each other as if they’re explaining the rules of a board game. There is no natural flow, and no subtlety. There are jarring tonal shifts as well: the dark and at times horrific storyline involves sex trafficking, and it is supposedly Josie’s moral repulsion at this that causes her to remain in California to investigate, yet she doesn’t behave as if she’s particularly bothered by any of it. There are some attempts at banter between the characters that feel forced, too, and out of place in what should be a gritty spy story.
Josie’s bosses back in the UK, though initially concerned at their newest trainee going AWOL, are surprisingly casual when they find out that she’s “fine”, and just wants to keep secretly investigating, alone and directly against orders from the other side of the world. They give her one week to bring down every corrupt being in her vicinity - plenty of time, despite there being new characters introduced on every page.
Many characters get a lot of backstory that a lot of them don’t need, and these biographies are often dropped all in a oner, rather than fed in easier to digest spoonfuls throughout the book. This makes the narrative feel clunky and often hard to get through.
That said, Josie is a fun character to spend time with. She is somewhat too good at everything she turns her hand to, and we spend a lot of time listening to people talk about how amazing she is, which can get tiring, but she’s got a believable backstory to explain her superhero skills.
There are a few too many classic spy cliches, including an aging pro who plays a strong father figure role, the young, computer whizz kid who can hack anything and the stern and tough female boss with a hidden soft centre. All predictable and recognisable, but not off-putting.
The story itself - the drug lord, the sex traffickers, the corruption - reads like it would make a heck of a movie script, and perhaps that what it should have been. It doesn’t quite tie together as a novel as well as it could, and yet I have to admit that I did whizz through it. Despite all its flaws I powered through the first half, and when I had to put the book down I felt a twinge of regret that at interrupting the story.
The characters we are supposed to root for, though often annoying, aren’t unpalatable enough to make you want to put the book down, the short, snappy chapters keep things moving along at a decent pace and the narrative, though predictable, is dramatic enough to hold the attention.
No Way Out by Max Connor, HQ, £9.99
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