Saint Death (John Milton)

‼️Triggers - Gruesome Murders‼️John Milton is still trying to evade “Command” who is in hot water after his last agent he sent after John failed and that agent came back the worse for wear. Now after 6 months John is in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico working as a cook in run of the mill restaurant. The pace seems a little slow but the area is rife with The Cartel who have been committing heinous crimes and as they have many of the law enforcement and heads of companies and more in their pockets, their crimes go unpunished.There is a journalist who is trying to expose them and one of the things the Cartel hate is being written about in the press negatively. She manages to get a young escaped victim to meet her with her fellow writer in a restaurant. The very restaurant that you guessed it where John is working. Trouble follows him everywhere!!As the trio sit having dinner and talking the young girls face disappears as the diners all hit the deck as the cartel have come to add to their kill lists. While everyone tries to hide John runs towards trouble. He slides across the restaurant floor throws a butterfly knife and he hits its target and he saves the journalist’s life who sustains a minor gunshot wound the trio are now one.While this is going on a Mexican cop days away from retiring has been keeping his head down and letting things go unpunished. He is at the scene as one of the cartel aims at him and he freezes while watching the gun in slow motion. Milton acts and he comes to life and realises John is more than a cook.We see the ramifications of John’s mistake of being fingerprinted with one of Command’s top analyst’s tracking him down. Will they capture him as John faces the cartel and he gets into a near death situation and one thing about John, is when all is lost and you think that is the end of him, as he “utters we can do this the easy way or the hard way” as they laugh thinking they have the upper hand, he always keeps his promises, underestimate him at your own cost…..I found it hard to put down, definitely not a bedtime read.

John milton has been under the radar for six months, he arrives in juarez mexico taking a job as a cookOne night the cafe where he works is attacked by mexican cartel scicarios, two reporters are trying to interview a witness doing a story against the cartelMilton kills the scicarios and tries to help a young journalist to be smuggled into texas, with the assassin santa meurte (saint death) on their tail and eyes all over juarez looking for them it won't be easy

I first encountered Mark Dawson’s work last year in his debut novel “The Cleaner” and was sufficiently impressed to give his second book a go. Although it had the same protagonist, the plot was significantly different from the first in many ways.While the protagonist, John Milton, is still a lost soul trying to do good in a bad world, the sort of people he found himself combatting were considerably more violent, and more professional in their violence, than the street gangs of Dalston and Hackney I met in the first book.In “Saint Death” John Milton washes up in Cuidad Juarez, the city on the US/Mexican border that has one of the highest murder rates in the world. Here he finds himself taking on the Mexican drug traffickers that send their product across the border into the USA, making vast profits along the way. They control Juarez, have the police in their pocket and no one with any sense goes against them. So it’s easy to guess what John Milton does next.There have been a lot of kidnappings and murders of young girls in the town and campaigning blogger Caterina earns the enmity of the biggest drug cartel by trying to expose them for these crimes. In fact it is only one cartel member, albeit a very senior one, who is responsible. He is the eponymous “Saint Death”.Saint Death attempts to kill Caterina, her writing partner and one of the victims who escaped from Saint Death before she could be killed. John Milton comes to their aid, but only manages to save the life of Caterina, which earns him the dubious honour of becoming a new target for Saint Death. It is a race with the devil to try to get Caterina to a place of safety before Saint Death can find her – and Milton.Meanwhile, back in London, a shadowy government department who are responsible for ‘retiring’ Britain’s enemies wants their former employee, John Milton, back. An employee of GCHQ is tasked with tracking him down by trying to find his digital presence. A task force of agents, just as skilled as Milton, is sent to Mexico to try to bring him home, giving him two problems to deal with. While his employers want Milton back alive, if that can’t be achieved then dead will do.Overall this book has most of the qualities of a good thriller. Its pace is brisk, Milton is a believable protagonist and the plot has enough twists and turns to keep the reader turning the page to find out what happens next. Parts of the story require a considerable suspension of disbelief, but I actually found it easy to go along with for most of the time. The writing is good without becoming pretentious.So why only four stars? Well, it could easily have been five, but I found the character of Saint Death a little bit under-written. We know he is a criminal, but we never get to see inside his mind and understand what makes him tick. He is bad because he is bad and we have to accept that. This isn’t a problem confined to just this book, it seems to be a common complaint, at least of mine. I really would like to understand why the bad guys are so bad, rather than having to accept them as they are. It gives them a very two-dimensional feel, which is unsatisfying. I don’t expect deep level psychoanalysis – just some sort of credible motivation that shows the reader why the bad guy is such a snarling sociopath.Overall, however, this is an enjoyable read and just the sort of thing for lying by the swimming pool with a cold beer close at hand. I would recommend reading “The Cleaner” first, to get a handle on Milton’s character, but new readers can start from fresh with this second book without missing too much.

…but doesn’t really make the jump from daydream ‘I’m ex-black ops and now making up for all the bad stuff’ to what that might really be like, psychologically, and how the risks, threats and challenges might actually be met, mitigated and overcome, operationally (but maybe that doesn’t matter)

I'm mystified by this author's popularity. The writing is just OK, very average, but the storyline is very weak. He creates an interesting situation, then resolves it in the most simplistic manner. Time and again he leads the story forward by making his characters do incredibly stupid things just so he can arrange for his hero to save the day in a gory, bloody manner. And is it bloody? The violence in this book is extreme. I couldn't possibly count the number of deaths herein. What a bloody waste of time!

Another great Milton book by Mark Dawson . I could not put it down until I had finished reading it.