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Last Light is a resounding demonstration of Andy McNab's evolving abilities, offering a richer level of plotting, along with the customary well-turned rough stuff. McNab might initially have seemed to be some kind of briefly shining star in the bestseller firmament, his SAS experience and well-advertised pseudonym guaranteeing a couple of toughly authentic thrillers in the style of Bravo Two Zero, and no more. But such successive books as Firewall, Remote Control and Crisis Four have categorically demonstrated that he has more than enough top-flight skills to sustain a long writing career. In Last Light, after terminating an officially approved assassination bid at the Houses of Parliament when he realises the identity of the intended target, McNab's hard-as-nails protagonist Nick Stone, "deniable operator" of the intelligence services, is severely disciplined by his bosses. He is told to travel to Panama and finish the job, or he and Kelly (the 11-year-old girl he is guarding) will be "taken care of" themselves. As Nick gets ready for his assignment in central America, he soon finds that his enemies have turned the tables on him: he is now the hunted, and finds himself up to his neck in a murky plot involving Colombian rebels and the US government. All the usual McNab fingerprints are here: not too much shading, but flinty characterisation and a barrel load of high-velocity action.--Barry Forshaw
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