In Golden Serpent, Alan McQueen is an Aussie spy on the verge of retirement. He is asked, or rather told, to go on one last mission. He is supposed to rescue another Australian spy, a girl working out of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta. Instead, he gets caught up in a messy international intelligence situation, involving large amounts of explosives and deadly nerve gas in the hands of terrorists and turncoats. Filled with characters from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Indonesia, where most of the action is set, there is also a sprinkling of ‘Yanks’. The language gets a bit tedious at times; in particular Mac’s usual greeting ‘Zit going?’ Very grating, but there are also moments of levity-the classification of a particularly obnoxious guy as a ‘boobtalker’ was one. I found the plot very complicated-the nature of the situation is such that every intelligence agency in Jakarta is involved and the abbreviations they all use made my head spin! There are certainly not many boring moments-nearly everyone Mac meets is out to kill him. Overall, a good book for dads and men who love military/spy novels and some challenging reading..

Jessica Broadbent is a former bookseller and sales and marketing assistant at Thorpe-Bowker

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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