Recent thrillers

One of the pleasures of reviewing books is finding one written so well that there has to be a line drawn from racing from chapter to chapter and holding back so the end does not come too quickly. The Hunter (Hachette), by Tom Wood, is such a book.

Wood develops the personality of his main character, Victor, so well that you are drawn into his life and start to feel empathy.

This is despite the fact that Victor is a killer for hire who shows absolutely no mercy for his victims. His "skills" are for sale to the highest bidder, he meets with no-one, uses a complex online network to receive instructions and cash and seems to have no-one of emotional importance in his life - and you feel sorry for him, at times.

Victor has a contract to kill a Latvian national in Paris as soon as possible. After the killing, Victor books into a hotel and the real drama of the book begins. At stake is a sunken ship containing Russian missiles. While the ship is thought to have sunk to unreachable depths, a few people know the truth - that it is on a shelf, not the ocean floor.

Victor now moves from being the pursuer to the pursued as various government agencies want him wiped off the face of the earth. He is seen as expendable after he killed the Latvian. The game changes throughout the book. Victor is paired up with an American woman whom he does not trust but is obliged to work with because of her outstanding technological skills.

This is conspiracy theory at its best, with Wood providing such believable plots that you forget sometimes that it is a novel and not a history of the KGB, MI5 or the FBI. Unfortunately, an extraordinarily long fight scene between Victor and an assassin as skilled as himself slows the pace with a chapter to go until the end. But overall the book is a worthwhile read.

• Clive Cussler has again teamed with another writer for his latest novel, The Jungle (Penguin). This time he writes with Jack Du Brul about Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon, a converted tramp steamer that has the latest and very best technology and arms money can buy.

Of the books Cussler has published this year, this is the best. It involves kidnapping, blackmail, treachery by the inner circle and some genuinely obnoxious rich people. The crew of the Oregon are sent to the Burmese jungle to rescue the daughter of a multibillionaire.

The daughter has, in the past, not wanted to be rescued as she tramps peaks, swamps and jungles throughout the world.

But some coercion sees the crew take the mission.

In the jungle, they are ambushed, betrayed and barely make it back alive. They uncover a threat to the security of the United States that is considered worse than the September 2001 attacks.

The book's an easy read but one worth completing.

• Dene Mackenzie is a Dunedin journalist.