BookView Review

Dunlop crafts a taut and brilliantly sardonic tale of survival, betrayal, and the shifting boundaries between duty and damnation in his latest novel. Returning home from a brutal contract in the Balkans, mercenary Andy MacKay finds himself accused of attempted murder—and when his lawyer disappears, he becomes both hunter and hunted. His search drags him through Europe’s decaying underworld of brothels, drug dens, and execution grounds, where every truth comes at the cost of blood.

Dunlop’s prose shines with dark humor. He contrasts the wreckage of war and the corrosion of conscience with exacting emotional clarity. Acidic, weary, and painfully self-aware, Andy’s voice shapes the novel’s moral core. It’s both confession and indictment—a running commentary on what war does to a man’s soul and what he learns to excuse. 

The dialogue is crisp, often hilarious, thoroughly authentic, and the pacing remains taut. Dunlop balances the explosive action with emotional depth and philosophical weight, letting the story’s moral tension emerge naturally. At its heart, this is both a story of survival and a meditation on integrity in a system that rewards compromise. Readers drawn to morally complex thrillers will find this one hard to put down.

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