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The Gun Seller
Looking for "a good man" in the Military Industrial Complex
The Gun Seller is a very fast-paced joke-filled book about a Britisher named Thomas Lang, a former member of the Scots Guard, now a freelance soldier of fortune. The story begins with Lang being paid a handsome to kill Alexander Woolf, Chairman and CEO of Gaine Parker, a large corporation with military contracts.
Refusing to take on the job, Lang hurries to warn Woolf only to learn that it was Woolf who had made the contract. Asked why he had put out a murder contract on himself, Woolf replies that he wanted to know what kind of man Lang was. Satisfied of the answer Woolf asks Lang to help him stop, government sponsored bloodshed.
Before Lang can provide Woolf with an answer, the villians of this adventure story kidnap Lang and Woolf, succeed in killing the latter, while Lang escapes after a harrowing close call. From then on, Lang finds himself caught up in intrigue both with the British Ministry of Defence and an unnamed agency of the U.S. government.
The Gun Seller reads like a James Bond novel. There is a love interest, Woolf’s beautiful daughter Sarah. Lang’s one ally is David Solomon, an ex-Scots Guardsman who had served with Lang in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, he works for Ministry of Defence and provides limited aid.
The bad guys are really bad. There is the American Russell Barnes, who with his entourage of thick-neck associates all of whom Lang has labeled with the name "Carl," continue to chase Lang all around London. Then there’s the ultimate bad guy, Naimh Murdah, the arms dealer.
"Close up, there were two things I could tell about Mr. Murdah: he was not the Major-domo; and the sheen on his face was money.
"It wasn’t caused by money, or bought with money. It simply was money. Money that he’d eaten, worn, driven, breathed, in such quantities, and for so long, that it had started to secrete from the pores of his skin. You may not think this possible, but money had actually made him beautiful."
Like Ian Fleming’s James Bond, the hero of The Gun Seller, is a one-man army but without Bond’s array of high tech gadgets. Though both characters are lone wolf’s with a healthy disrespect for authority, Lang is more the chivalrous knight than the womanizing Bond. No sex during the story and only one love interest at that, damsel in distress Sarah.
Likable Lang is a no nonsense guy who when asked the question "are you a good man Thomas," responds by spending the rest of the story proving the answer true. However, this story is not a deep study of character.
The author of the book Hugh Laurie is an unlikely author of action-adventure books. For fans of PBS, Laurie is Wooster in the series Jeeves and Wooster and has acted in numerous film roles including Sense and Sensibility.
If you enjoy action adventure books, The Gun Seller will certainly deliver plenty of both.
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