Review by Booklist Review
Ishmael Jones, an alien operative of the top-secret British organization known only as the Organization, is sent off to Loch Ness, where the shadowy and powerful Baphamet Group or the Bilderburg Group, as Ishmael describes it is holding its annual conference. He's taking over the duties of head of security for the conference, and his first job is to find out who killed a young Organization operative who had been assigned to the conference and to determine whether there's a spy lurking in the background. Ishmael is a wonderful character, an extraterrestrial living among humans, and the series (this is the third installment) is a clever mixture of thriller and SF-horror genres. Green is best known for the Deathstalker space operas, but give this one a few more installments to develop, and it could well become Green's masterwork.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Ishmael Jones, a space alien who never ages and whose secret weapon for solving problems is punching, investigates brutal, potentially supernatural attacks in an isolated Scottish manor house.Jones works for the Organization, which is so shadowy that not even he knows its history or purpose. He's accompanied by his girlfriend and partner, Penny Belcourt, who apparently exists only to flatter Jones and have things explained to her. The Organization has sent them to a haunted mansion on the banks of Loch Ness, where the Baphomet Group, an international cabal of 12 of the world's wealthiest people, is having its annual meeting of unspecified racketeering and collusion (not to be confused with the Illuminati, which is obviously the crackbrained product of a laughable conspiracy theory). The Organization doesn't care about financial manipulations but for some reason does care that one of the manipulators might have been killed and replaced with a doppelgnger. And they definitely care that the first agent they sent to investigate was killed. Jones arrives at the manor, punches a dozen bodyguards, insults the staff and the entire Baphomet Group, and only then turns to examining the body and the scene of the crime. The carnage suggests an attack by some creature, but the only possible motives are human. Jones breaks up a gun battle among the security guards with more punching, explores a secret tunnel while most of the Baphomet Group plus five prostitutes are slaughtered, and then, in the climactic battle, punches the killer to death. Green (Dead Man Walking, 2016, etc.) presents a lightweight mystery featuring incoherent worldbuilding, pathetically childish attempts at machismo, and a glaringly obvious solution. Juvenile schlock. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
