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A review by jacki_f
Vanishing Games by Roger Hobbs
4.0
I've been going through something of a reading slump lately. I've started and then given up on four books in the last couple of weeks. I keep getting to the 80-100 page mark and losing interest. So I badly needed something that would hook me in quickly and hold my interest without demanding too much of me. Vanishing Games delivered perfectly.
This is the sequel to Roger Hobbs' debut novel, [b:Ghostman|18189462|Ghostman (Jack White, #1)|Roger Hobbs|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402389051s/18189462.jpg|19258159], but you don't need to have read that book to make sense of this one. Although both feature the same protagonist, the storylines are only very slightly related. Our narrator, perhaps called Jack, is a "ghostman" - someone whose job it is to be forgettable, to disappear or to help other criminals disappear. He lost contact with a friend after a job that went wrong several years ago, but now she's in trouble and needs his help. Jack travels to Macau to find Angela and discovers that she has some very nasty people after her.
There are several things I really like about this book. Much like Tom Wood's excellent series about "Victor", Jack is a level headed professional. He's logical, he's not going to let his heart rule his head and he's calculated about the risks that he takes. You feel that you're getting an insight into how a character like this might operate and how he will establish connections in a strange environment. The locations are well drawn and vividly portrayed. The author has done his research and incorporates little snippets into the plot which make it feel credible.
The plot itself is not outstanding, but it's satisfying. It doesn't have the relentless readability that a Lee Child book has, but it's still an above average thriller that I really enjoyed.
This is the sequel to Roger Hobbs' debut novel, [b:Ghostman|18189462|Ghostman (Jack White, #1)|Roger Hobbs|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1402389051s/18189462.jpg|19258159], but you don't need to have read that book to make sense of this one. Although both feature the same protagonist, the storylines are only very slightly related. Our narrator, perhaps called Jack, is a "ghostman" - someone whose job it is to be forgettable, to disappear or to help other criminals disappear. He lost contact with a friend after a job that went wrong several years ago, but now she's in trouble and needs his help. Jack travels to Macau to find Angela and discovers that she has some very nasty people after her.
There are several things I really like about this book. Much like Tom Wood's excellent series about "Victor", Jack is a level headed professional. He's logical, he's not going to let his heart rule his head and he's calculated about the risks that he takes. You feel that you're getting an insight into how a character like this might operate and how he will establish connections in a strange environment. The locations are well drawn and vividly portrayed. The author has done his research and incorporates little snippets into the plot which make it feel credible.
The plot itself is not outstanding, but it's satisfying. It doesn't have the relentless readability that a Lee Child book has, but it's still an above average thriller that I really enjoyed.