Liberation Day

Publishers Weekly

Former British SAS agent Nick Stone sets his sights on al-Qaida in his fifth adventure (after Last Light), a search-and-capture mission weighed down by excessive detail and a numbing lack of action. Stone, now working for a special antiterrorist U.S. strike team, is assigned to the south of France to choke off al-Qaida's money line. Stone has taken the job reluctantly. He wants to retire, but the CIA has promised him U.S. citizenship and a new life with the woman he loves if he completes the task. On arrival in Cannes, Stone hooks up with two Egyptian sidekicks, and the trio begin tracking down the so-called hawalla, the secret network of underground bankers who finance terrorist operations and compensate the families of those who die in the cause. Specifically, Stone's job is to kidnap three of the bankers and whisk them to a U.S. warship just off the French coast, where they will be interrogated and forced to reveal the origin and destination of their money. As is his custom, Stone takes the beating of his life, but perseveres in the face of overwhelming odds. McNab, a British special forces member for more than a decade, is at his best when the action gets hairy, as it finally does toward the end. Too much of his latest, however, is spent following Stone through the mundane details of mission preparation-staking out locations, following suspects, ruminating about possible scenarios. Instead of biting their nails, readers will be staring at them absently, bored by the colorless plot. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Ex-Special Forces member McNab (Last Light, 2002, etc.), back in a fifth outing, continues his career of vicarious mayhem. It’s one last assassination for British ex-pat, Bond-heir apparent, superspy-assassin Nick Stone—who doesn’t know why the Algerian convenience-store king Zeralda needs to die and doesn’t really care. After all, he’s a "K" who works on deniable missions for the Intelligence Service, and "I’d always tried to turn my back on the guilt, remorse, and self-doubt that always followed a job." Nick brings Zeralda’s head home and doesn’t say a word. Will he now be able to put all that behind him and become a barman or a tour guide, get his US citizenship, and please the two women in his life, the love interest and the semi-estranged daughter? Fugeddaboudit. It takes only the knowledge that Zeralda was mixed up with Al Qaeda (not to mention little boys) to bring our hero back to action tout de suite ("Today was the day the covert three-man team I commanded was about to take the war to Al Qaeda"). He vaults back into his world of intrigue and gadgetry, working with men who are used to jabbering in Arabic on the Net (but he’ll manage) and encountering characters with names like Hubba Hubba, Leather Girl, and Goatee. And when the mission’s all over, the dirty bomb thwarted, etc., Hubba Hubba is quick to remind Nick that he wouldn’t want to be a barman anyway, and superspies were sort of a family, weren’t they? "I couldn’t be a student or a bartender," Nick concedes. "I couldn’t do anything other than what I did." McNab may be slipping a bit here in trying to churn out product to match the times: it’s up-to-date enough to refer to Mr. And Mrs. B. entertaining heads of statewith Tex-Mex while bombs fall in Afghanistan. Still, McNab is as obsessed with detail as always. Another franchise in the Nick Stone industry.