Member Review

Desmond Aloysius Limerick, “Dez”, is a Gatekeeper; there is no door on the earth – physical and virtual – that won’t open, stay in the position, and close as per his wishes. Having retired from espionage games and relocated to the USA, Dez plays music and leads a laidback life, occasionally using his prodigious skills to help his friends. When one such friend – twenty-year-old Raziah Swann, a talented musician – calls Dez about the jam her sister, Laleh, is in, he promptly reaches Portland, Oregon, expecting to solve the matter quickly. Laleh is a journalist working on a story – nothing sensitive – about a much-respected billion-dollar technological company, and the intimidation, including a mugging, she faces is inexplicable. Dez finds that the people after her seem extremely professional – unlike what one would expect from the security force of a tech firm – and further investigation reveals that they do not exist on any government database. Some large-scale conspiracy is being perpetrated under the hood of the technological giant, and Dez must employ all his considerable skills to prevent the bad ones from achieving their goal while preserving the lives of Raziah, Laleh, and himself.

Deadlock by James Byrne, the second outing of Dez following The Gatekeeper, is nothing if not entertaining, predominantly due to the hero’s quirky characterisation. Byrne seems to have gathered the qualities of all the much-admired protagonists from the world of fiction and endowed his hero with those and then some. And the result is entertaining for the most part instead of annoying as one would expect. The other characters, especially the female ones, are engaging too, though the males are not much so, barring a couple. The plot of Deadlock is outlandish, and the actions involving Dez are outrageous, but it is tremendous fun watching him serve up surprise after surprise to the villains. The breakneck pace of the narrative does not give much time to the reader to wonder about the plausibility of the happenings, and this is what escapist fiction is all about. Deadlock works well as a standalone despite being the second book in the series, but the intriguing epilogue keeps future adventures for Dez wide open, and I would not be averse to reading those.

My gratitude to St. Martin’s and Minotaur Books for the Digital Review Copy of Deadlock in exchange for my unbiased review through NetGalley!