Dave Sinclair

I've only ever met one spy (... that I know of), and he wasn't anything like Charles Bishop. Never took on a powerful arms-dealing organisation (as far as I know), never got stabbed, shot at, beaten up, taken prisoner, made friends with a Russian spy, or slept with the enemy either (as far as I know). Now I'm wondering all the things I should have asked, and never did. Reading, after all, is educational and if you take nothing away from the Charles Bishop series by Dave Sinclair, it could be a list of things to bring up in conversation the next time you meet a spy.

Needless to say, tongue in cheek, great fun, slightly crazy espionage thriller with a hefty sense of humour featuring a crash bang fight to the death, a fabulously bad baddie, and one of the oddest pairings of good spys against the evil you're going to come across. I do like Dave Sinclair's out and out fun thrillers. I particularly like the "guide to Espionage" series featuring Eva Destruction (okay so now you've got a good idea of the style of pun....) and this one is turning out to be just as much fun. There is a helpful note to readers that does point out that the events in the Charles Bishop novels occur before those in the Eva Destruction series (which came out before the Charles Bishop ones...). Charles Bishop and Eva Destruction come across as perfect examples of those nicely sarcastic, nicely unstoppable and every so nicely naughty types - although Eva's more of an accidental spy, whilst Bishop seems to be slightly more from the "career" side of the equation.

Either way, all these novels are good fun. Think James Bond, with shades of Austin Powers; or The Saint, with shades of Mr Bean. And maybe a bit of Inspector Clouseau's Cato. Or something. I don't know. They're fun. Read them.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/kiss-my-assassin-dave-sinclair… (mais)

Slapstick, silly, 1.5 (novella) in the series which is now up to book 3, I'm reviewing this out of order, although by a minor miracle I've been reading them in order.

Lot's could be said about the fact that this is a fun series, featuring Australian Barista, MI6 Agent Eva Destruction as she keeps the world safe from the bad guys, and tries desperately to find a decent coffee.

Instead of those lot's of things, let's go with - if you like high energy, wacky humour, silly action, kick-arse hero's then the Eva Destruction series should be on your radar:

Book 1: The Barista's Guide to Espionage
Book 1.5: The Rookie's Guide to Espionage
Book 2: The Amnesiac's Guide to Espionage
Book 3: The Dead Spy's Guide to Espionage

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/rookies-guide-espionage-dave-sinclair… (mais)

I certainly hope that anybody coming to this series isn't expecting serious. I mean "Eva Destruction"... You should, however, be expecting all the thrills, spills, banter and high energy action that you'd get with any top notch thriller series of novels.

In this second full-sized outing (there's a 1.5 novella out as well - THE ROOKIE'S GUIDE TO ESPIONAGE) Eva Destruction, barista extraordinare, coffee shop owner and MI6 agent is up to her elbows in blokes ("on her side", "definitely not on her side", and "it's complicated"), gun battles and assassinations, all without the aid of any memory of the last six months. You see Eva woke up with an apartment full of men (the "not on her side" variety), and no memory of her recent past. Which makes it very hard to decide if the good guy is the besotted CIA agent or the misogynistic smart mouthed MI6 one ("on her side" and "it's complicated" - you work it out). It's much easier for everybody to work out who the bad guys are though - they are the ones armed to the teeth and very intent on tracking down a small nuclear bomb that they seem to think Eva has tucked away somewhere safe, even though she has no idea where, why or what the....

Which leads to, as per the blurb, exotic Macau casinos and a millionaire playboy; a French castle (her own, for the full story you'll have to read the first novel THE BARISTA'S GUIDE TO ESPIONAGE) and an English country mansion; culminating in a car chase between a tricked up, nuclear bomb toting ice-cream van and a lot of black SUVs through England and into the streets of London.

Did I mention not to expect serious?

These books are littered with wisecracks, smart arsery to laugh out loud at, and some really good action scenes in which everyone - CIA, MI6 and Eva - get to do some daring doing and a bit of smack and tackle. There's even a short, sharp Molotov cocktail armed French castle siege which really only needed more insults being shouted to raise more suspicions that we've got a bit of a Monty Python fan behind all this.

This is a fun series, close enough to silly, but never too far into farce. Read them starting anywhere if you have to, but the start will give you a very good idea of how the castle came about, and how a loud-mouthed Aussie barista (a good one) ends up as an MI6 agent "tasked" to save the world.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/amnesiacs-guide-espionage-dave-sinclair… (mais)