“Hunted by assassins, Trasker is drawn into the same complex high-tech underworld of cryptocurrency, digital espionage, and betrayal that swallowed up the runaway coders. As the line between ally and enemy blurs, and the stakes become life and death, Trasker must navigate the dangerous intersection of modern intelligence and old-school spy games to survive.”
Death Stake, Andrew Mayne
Andrew Mayne is the bad habit I can’t quit. I loved his Underwater Investigation Unit series and enjoyed his Theo Cray series enough to finish it, but Brad Trasker may have broken me. I want to start by whole-heartedly requesting that Brad’s mom, a retired spy and single mom, gets her own series. Because Brad is extremely boring, like most men in their 50s.
Brad is the quintessential retired spy. Divorced, depressed, disillusioned. Also, he has an incredibly tragic backstory that was completely unnecessary and didn’t add a single modicum of complexity to his character. In the first book, Brad meets Kylie. Kylie is essentially the same character as Hailey from the Naturalist series, just with a different name and field of interest. She’s a genius and young, but not naive, and doesn’t need to be protected. Then Brad solves a problem for Kylie and she hires him as her head of security. Somehow, that only seems to involve going to foreign countries and killing people, instead of managing a security team at Kylie’s offices.
Mayne does have an innate talent at writing thrilling action scenes. As long as Brad was jetting around cities, hiding from corrupt local cops and jumping off buildings, I could stay invested. And I did learn a lot about cryptocurrency (every girl’s dream) without it feeling monotonous. But every Brad monologue was just “I’m too old for this shit” and that really started to grate on me. Brad didn’t even have cool retired spy friends he could visit in the foreign cities he visited, because Brad is so boring.
To be fair, 90% of this review could be about truly any James Bond or Lethal Weapon movie. So if you’re looking for a fun dad spy type of series, this could be an absolute homerun for you. On the flip side, if you’re looking for a unique plot, great character development, and captivating storylines, please read Mayne’s Underwater Investigation Unit series!
Thanks to Netgalley and Brilliance Audio for the free advanced audiobook in exchange for an honest review!
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