The Darkest Day (Victor the Assassin #5) ★★★☆☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Darkest Day
Series: Victor the Assassin #5
Authors: Tom Wood
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 293
Words: 90K

Ol’ Victorewsky is hired to whack an arms dealer. Only it turns into an ambush and Victor is almost killed by another assassin. The CIA operative who set up the original hit lets Victor know the other assassin is a rogue agent and one of the best. Victor sets out on her trail and in the process sets himself up as a dupe in a potential terrorist attack by the aforementioned CIA operative. Victor and Miss Assassin ally and take down a group of special forces who are going to use a dirty nuke in New York City. They give the evidence to Victor’s handler so everything is ship shape. Then Miss Assassin tries to hook up with Victor, because being an assassin is lonely business. And Victor kills her because she knows too much about him. Ohhhhhhh, snap!

I was enjoying the first part of this book immensely. Victor almost getting offed and realizing there is somebody else as good as him was great. But once he hits NYC and hooks up with Miss Assassin, it all went to the crapper. Most of that is because Victor gets chased through the city and the cops keep finding him. Now, that doesn’t sound so bad does it? BUT! There is a blackout. There is a massive rainstorm. Everybody is stuck on the road because of the blackout. And the flipping cops keep finding Victor like he’s the prize in a box of cracker jax. It was just too much for me. NYC, even just the part that is Manhattan Island, is too big and busy for cops to find one guy in those circumstances. It was like Woods was treating NYC like some little sleepy one street European town. While I avoid big cities, I’ve been in a couple (and never want to do it again if I can help it) and the thought of the cops being able to find me at the drop of a hat is just ludicrous.

So that really took down my enjoyment. A lot. To the point where I was thinking about giving this 2 stars. But then the ending redeemed it when Victor shows what an absolute psychopath loner he is. It made me say outloud, “Oh, that is BRUTAL!” But it was consistent with how he had lived his entire life and it wouldn’t have made sense at all for Victor to get romantically involved with another assassin who could identify him. This series has been consistently good and I am glad Wood (the author) didn’t skimp here and try to make Victor some sort of “relatable” guy. He’s a successful assassin, period.

★★★☆☆

• All of My “Victor the Assassin” Reviews