Wicked Game by Matt Johnson

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You can buy Wicked Game.....Here

You can follow Matt's blog....Here

The Blurb...

2001. Age is catching up with Robert Finlay, a police officer on the Royalty Protection team based in London. He's looking forward to returning to uniform policing and a less stressful life with his new family. But fate has other plans. Finlay's deeply traumatic, carefully concealed past is about to return to haunt him.

A policeman is killed by a bomb blast, and a second is gunned down in his own driveway. Both of the murdered men were former Army colleagues from Finlay's own SAS regiment, and in a series of explosive events, it becomes clear that he is not the ordinary man that his colleagues, friends and new family think he is.

And so begins a game of cat and mouse a wicked game, in which Finlay is the target, forced to test his long-buried skills in a fight against a determined and unidentified enemy.

Wicked Game is a taut, action-packed, emotive thriller about a man who might be your neighbour, a man who is forced to confront his past in order to face a threat that may wipe out his future, a man who is willing to do anything to protect the people he loves.

But is it too late?

My Review..

This week in work I would be driving a giant forklift in an enclosed, air conditioned cab. I would not be able to read but could listen an audio book. I had resolved read more Crime Cymru authors so I went for one of the big dogs and downloaded Wicked Game by Matt Johnson. Wicked Game was released in 2016 so I am not exactly up to date but boy what an intense, stress inducing white knuckle ride.

Robert Finley ex SAS ex Royal Protection Squad is winding down as an ordinary copper in a suburban police station. That is until Met colleagues who have also been in the SAS are being targeted. One is bombed, one is gunned down. Finley finds out from his old CO that there is an assassination squad at work and that he is on the hit list. His old CO wants to drag him back into a Black Op. Soon Finley is trapped between his wife (who knows nothing about his SAS past,)  the Terrorists, his old CO and the anti terrorist squad. There is only a small, grey space between them all, and it is shrinking all the time. Finley must defend himself and his family while at the same time trying to find out who the terrorists are and where the leak about his new life after the SAS came from. His only ally is his old mate from the SAS who is also on the kill list. Who can he trust? That list is short. Who wants him dead? That list is long.

As I said earlier, I listened to the audiobook (which was very good.)

The only quibble I had, being a Welshman from the valleys, was with the accent of the character of Kevin Jones. Kevin Jones was supposed to be from the valleys but sounded to me more "Gog" than valleys. I imagine voice over artists must dread doing accents that are not their own. For example to those outside Wales I would imagine there is only one Welsh accent but to those of us that live here, there are many. As I say it is only a minor quibble and did not detract from my enjoyment of this terrific book.

Just when you think Finley's cracked it another curveball comes his way again and again. The author does a stirling job of keeping the tension on. No plot point or action is left unexamined. Every scene is minutely observed. There is no respite for Finley or us. Nerves are shredded, and there is mental tactical chess to go alongside the life or death violence. In reality I have no idea if a plot like this could be real but when you read the author's background, you gain a whole new respect for the narrative.

Think "Line of Duty" but with Special Branch, terrorists and the murky world of MI5. It's LeCarre if LeCarre was in the gutter and gritty. 

Wicked Game is the first in a three book series. It is followed by Deadly Game and End Game.  

Selected Quotes...

"I sensed a degree of discomfort in the room when my real name wasn’t provided. Not everyone agreed with soldiers being allowed such a concession."

"he mentioned there had been a lot of reports in the press about contacts between the security forces and the terrorist factions that were resulting in fatalities. Journalists were starting to claim that both the police and the army were operating a shoot-to-kill policy."

"I could trust him with my life. If he’d had something against me, I’d know about it. He wouldn’t do anything so elaborate as set me up to be arrested. That wasn’t his style. But then …"

"Was that just an awful coincidence? Einstein believed that coincidence was God’s way of remaining anonymous."

About the author...

Matt Johnson served as a soldier and Metropolitan Police officer for 25 years. Blown off his feet at the London Baltic Exchange bombing in 1993, and one of the first police officers on the scene of the 1982 Regent’s Park bombing, Matt was also at the Libyan People’s Bureau shooting in 1984 where he escorted his mortally wounded friend and colleague, Yvonne Fletcher, to hospital. Hidden wounds took their toll. In 1999, Matt was discharged from the police with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. While undergoing treatment, he was encouraged by his counsellor to write about his career and his experience of murders, shootings and terrorism. One evening, Matt sat at his computer and started to weave these notes into a work of fiction that he described as having a tremendously cathartic effect on his own condition.  His bestselling thriller, Wicked Game, which was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger, was the result.