The Cassandra Sanction – Scott Mariani

A TRAGIC DEATH.

A GRIEVING BROTHER.

A PLOT TO DECEIVE THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Ex-SAS major and kidnap recovery specialist Ben Hope is looking for peace in a quiet Spanish town. What he gets instead is the kind of trouble that only a man like him can handle.

Raul Fuentes can’t accept that his sister, Catalina, took her own life. Ben isn’t convinced, but ghosts from his own past compel him to help Raul discover the truth.

What connects Catalina’s apparent suicide to the suspicious fate of three of her fellow scientists? And why do a gang of professional killers follow Ben and Raul wherever they go?

Ben will soon discover the terrible truth: a fraudulent conspiracy to dupe all of humankind. And those responsible will soon find out they’ve met their match.

 

My thanks to Helena at Avon for my review copy and for the chance to join the blog tour

The Cassandra Sanction is the 12th Ben Hope thriller by Scott Mariani and (not having read any of the previous titles) it has caused me a bit of a problem. I now have 11 new books I need to add to my TBR pile and some serious catching up to do.  Yup it’s a good ‘un and I most definitely want to read more of Mr Hope’s adventures.

Customary considerations:  12 books into a series and you would expect to need to know something of the back story. I didn’t and I still really enjoyed the book – at no point did I feel I was missing something or that I lacked understanding about previous events. There are likely to have been nods and elements which returning readers will enjoy that will have flown right over my head but I missed them and I am comfortable with that!

Turning to the actual story…it was fun to have a proper action adventure to read for a change. A grieving brother refusing to believe his successful sister has taken her own life suddenly finds a kidnap recovery specialist (Hope) will listen to his story and believe him when he asserts that his sister is still alive. Throw a few seemingly unconnected deaths into the mix, a crew of well resourced hitmen following Hope and an international conspiracy designed to keep us in the dark about ***SPOILERS*** and you have a page-turner that will keep you reading long into the night.

Ben Hope was an interesting lead character. Dynamic, highly skilled, frequently irritable, yet focussed and fun to read about. A great balance of flawed yet effective. I can see why so many readers are delighted to see him return for another outing in The Cassandra Sanction.

The balance of the book is also quite important to me when I read an action thriller. If there is a life-threatening event in every chapter (and the escapes become too wild to believe) I just don’t get the same buy-in to the book. With The Cassandra Sanction the action sequences are very much there but they are not constant, ridiculous or beyond belief – it is a great read and the author hit the credible mark for me.

So just to be clear:

1 – Ben Hope and Scott Mariani have a new fan.

2 – I definitely need to read more adventure stories.

3 – The sun is much more interesting than I had thought so now I have a bit of non-fiction reading to do too.

 

 If, like me, you are new to Ben Hope then you may enjoy the chance to discover what you have been missing. As luck would have it, the lovely people at Avon have provided me with a link to share which will let you hear an audio clip from the very beginning of The Cassandra Sanction:

The link to the audio is here: https://soundcloud.com/harperaudio/the-cassandra-sanction-by

 

The Cassandra Sanction is published by Avon and is available in paperback and Digital formats here