Review: Another Espionage Thriller Courtesy of Maestro JJ Ward
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 4, 2014
Think through the suspense espionage thrillers that remain like phantoms in the brain and likely they will have been conceived by a British Isles author. Stepping as far back as the Sherlock Holmes style as presented by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and including the imagination of Ian Fleming's James Bond, we now add another master of the medium in J.J. Ward. Ward writes romantic fiction, espionage thrillers, philosophy and poetry. According to a brief bio, `he believes that commercial genres have warped people's thinking about fiction generally. "I think they exist so readers can be easily manipulated and milked, and they also - in some of their forms - perpetuate sexism. Any good story has elements of most, if not all, genres." He hopes men & women will read, and enjoy, what he has written in equal numbers. He lives in Sussex and is a secondary school teacher by profession, and runs the school Amnesty International club.' And as this prolific writer has stated, `I want to make romance attractive to men, and guns-`n-muscles attractive to women. And get us all talking to each other again. About books ... and life. `A too long introduction perhaps, but when reviewing spy novels it is better to let the reader know whether or not the suspense is warranted and in the case of TALES OF MI7: THE KRAMSKI CASE It is. For those who may have forgotten, MI7, the British Military Intelligence Section 7 (now defunct), was a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence. Part of the War Office, MI7 was set up to work in the fields of propaganda and censorship. Ward moves his action into three countries where the paparazzi are being systematically assassinated. The perpetrator is the man of the title - Dmitri Vassyli Kramski, a retired SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedkifield) operative and former Kremlin protégé. Vladimir Putin is loathe for Russia to play step down on the international stage as even the most strident of his Communist predecessors. In 2010 therefore, East-West relations remain as tortuous as ever. Kramski's trail leads deep into London's émigré community, forcing his pursuers into conflict with an unknown organization bent on protecting him. Bit by bit, he begins to look less like a professional assassin and more like someone plotting to scupper the foundations of Western democracy itself. To compound matters, the Russians are as baffled by him as anyone. Espionage, murders, intrigue, and of course hot romance are billowing out of nearly every page of this very fast moving novel.JJ Ward has polished his style well and knows when and how to turn up the heat, whether that source be linked to suspense or to passion! Grady Harp, July 14