Manhunter

A new series from former SAS soldier Chris Ryan; a new all action hero, Josh Bowman; an old trope, as Bowman is in the grip of a serious opioid addiction to dull the trauma in his past. He’s also lugging around enough baggage to fill a military transport aircraft: his unbringing on a tough estate; links (through his brother-in-law, who also supplies most of his drugs) to organised crime; a wife and daughter brutally murdered in revenge for his undercover work as a cop before he joined the army and passed SAS selection. It’s enough to weigh anyone – and the story – down.

Manhunter starts with Bowman’s unit on duty at the wedding of a minor royal at Westminster Abbey. The soldiers are there to ensure nothing untoward happens to President Ken ‘the Viper’ Seguma of the Central African state of Karatandu. None of the men like having to act as bodyguards for the deeply unsavoury Seguma’s, but he’s just the sort of person the royals and the government are keen to cosy up to, as Karatandu is a mineral-rich state tipped to be a major provider of the components needed for electric cars. The Russians have their finger in the Karatandu pie as well and are believed to be supporting Seguma’s opponent, General Moses Kakuba, leader of the rebel opposition, in an attempted coup.

There’s a lot of tell not show early on, as Ryan sets the scene with Bowman grumbling about the sort of person they’re there to protect, and although the action does kick off eventually, I found Manhunter hard to get into. I didn’t take to Bowman and the fictitious country of Karatandu didn’t help, as I’m used to Ryan’s books being very firmly grounded in the real world, so buying into the existence of a made-up setting was surprisingly difficult and I felt this weakened the book’s impact and plausibility.

Unsurprisingly, Bowman ends up being recruited into a shadowy side branch of the SAS known as The Cell; a group that operates with a hoped-for degree of (im)plausible deniability when the government needs to be able to distance itself from the actions of its military.

Bowman is hard to like, and I don’t think I ever succeeded in that task. I’m not even sure I was meant to. The sheer unprofessionalism of anyone snorting drugs on an active operation really irritated me right from the start, and it became increasingly hard to suspend disbelief while those at Bowman’s side in highly charged combat situations continued to believe that his frequent attacks of the sweats and the shakes just heralded the start of a cold. The military have compulsory drugs testing for a very good reason and even Special Forces aren’t exempt from that. I know that flawed heroes are still very much in fashion, but Bowman felt like he’d been assembled from a quick smash and grab raid on the Big Book of Tropes, as did the rest of the characters. Apart from the shady boss, a former SAS hardman of somewhat dubious reputation, it was almost impossible to tell the other characters apart, and a constant stream of deeply unfunny jokes about one of the men’s short stature and lack of dating prowess just felt unduly forced.

The climax, a classic base under siege scene, was a long time coming but was the book’s main saving grace. The action was as gritty and realistic as I’ve come to expect from Ryan, with plenty of technical detail and economically described brutality. I was just starting to distinguish between the various characters when losing some of them seemed inevitable. The attackers had plenty of disposable cannon fodder with an almost endless supply of guns and ammunition, unlike the defenders who had finite resources on both counts, which served to ramp up the tension.

Manhunter isn’t one of Ryan’s best. The writing lacked his usual spark, and I got the feeling he was just trying too hard to establish his new lead character, throwing too much into the mix and stirring the pot too hard. When finally faced with the stark consequences of his inability to control his addiction, Bowman ends up vowing to get clean, but somehow, I suspect that plan won’t survive first contact with his next enemy. I’m not sure I like or trust the man enough to join him on his next job. Flawed is fine, unprofessional is something else entirely.