The Assassin

The Assassin is the fourth book in the Isabella Rose series by Mark Dawson, a prolific author of whom I’ve only recently become aware. While doing cliffhanger endings on the first three books which force the reader to the next novel if one wants to reach a conclusion, this one comes to an ending, sort of. At least it gets to a pause in what has been nonstop action through the first four books. Isabella is still only 16 or 17 years old at the conclusion of this one, but she is an intriguing character that kept me engaged in the series. Finally in this book, she becomes a central figure in the action as the bad guys are more clearly defined and then killed off one after the other. The writing and character development is good but not classic. The plot is somewhat believable, but there is something compelling, something I’ve not identified that is appealing about these stories. The novels are not stand-alone books like some writers of this genre. One must start at the beginning and work your way through them. I’m enamored enough with Dawson that I’ll probably go back to an earlier series, probably his Beatrix Rose series, Isabella’s mother, an assassin who taught Isabella her tradecraft.

The Agent

The Agent: Act III, is the third novel in the four-book series about Isabella Rose who has reached the age of 16 years. The story opens with another terrorist attach in England, this one being a bombing that takes place in Parliament. We learn more about the bad guys who have been pulling strings in the background, people who have grand plans for being in control of the world. We also learn more about their tools, a masterful but flawed group of soldier-assassins. And there’s a hint about what makes Isabella so special. Michael Pope’s family has been kidnapped as a means of forcing him to stay in the game. I was beginning to get tired of the unfinished thriller endings, but I needed to find out how this ended, so book four, The Assassin was next up on my reading queue.

The Asset: Act II

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Mark Dawson’s second novel in the four-book series about Isabella Rose, The Asset: Act II, opens with another terrorist act in England. Then we meet Maia for the first time, a female assassin of remarkable physical talents. Maia is a key figure in the rest of these novels. Isabella, still just 15 years old, as the result of Michael Pope’s involving her in an undercover scheme, has been kidnapped and is on a private jet headed for Syria when engine troubles forces a landing in Turkey where she and her captors are all forcibly taken into custody by ISIS. It’s not always clear who are the good guys. This is nonstop action which led me to immediately follow the story into the third and fourth books.

The Angel: Act I

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The Angel is the opening novel in Mark Dawson’s four-book series about Isabella Rose, the daughter of an assassin, Beatrix Rose, who was the protagonist of an earlier series of novels. Dawson is a remarkably prolific writer not previously reviewed in this bog. How have we missed him? The book opens with a well-written terrorist act in central London, and then we are introduced to the main characters in this series including Isabella who is only 15 years old. She had a murky early life and we only know that her mother Beatrix had spent the last year of her life training Isabella in the art of being a spy. It seems that Isabella was a very quick learner. We learned that Beatrix’s last acts were to kill the six people who had betrayed her, and she got to five of the six. However, her illness advanced and left her unable to kill the sixth. Isabelle completed that final task in honor of her mother, and now she was trying to get on with her life. Captain Michael Pope who had a long history in clandestine services was on a quest and he needed help, and he turned to this girl to help him. But then there is the master spy puppeteer, a man named Vivian Bloom, and by the end of this first book, Dawson has introduced us to him. This book had a sort of “Perils of Pauline” ending, which I typically hate – but this one was compelling enough to immediately drive me to the next novel, The Asset.