THE QUEENSLAND FILE
by Julian Jay Savarin
Harper Paperbacks (1994)
Reviewed by Robert Thompson 6-17-94
This is a "Gordon Gallagher Thriller", at least the sixth book in the series.
Gordon Gallager is a "retired" super-spy or something like that. There is a super-assassin doing nasty things to a wide variety of people. The story starts out in England, takes a quick trip to Portugal, then ends up in Australia.
The secret services of Britain, Russia and Australia are involved in the story, with good guys and bad guys represented on all sides, but in the end it is Gallager and the assassin on their own. There are some twists and turns in the plot, a few are surprises, a few are not.
I am having kind of a difficult time writing this review, because I had very mixed feelings about the book; it is almost like it was written by two different people, alternating pages.
The basic plot is quite good, and fairly exciting, but on one page the so called "best in the business" operatives are performing with professionalism, and on the next, page they will be acting in the unthinking manner of school children on a holiday.
The writing style is much like Ian Fleming's but the story itself is more in the tradition of the later James Bond movies, with cartoon villains and technology that is a refugee from bad science fiction. The assassin's weapon is a rifle that can be carried in a briefcase, shoots miniature cruise missiles with all kinds of target acquisition and identification computers in it. It is also perfectly silent although the cruise missiles travel faster than the speed of sound (which creates a sonic boom). The first assassination in the book was made at 4.587 kilometers (2.85 miles), and the assassin has packed up the weapon and started walking away by the time the target is hit....
RIGHT....SURE....
By page six, I was prepared to hate the story, and give it a bad review, but I kept turning pages, and kind of enjoyed parts of it.
I guess that anyone who knows about ballistics, true life spies and assassins etc. will probably have the same reactions that I did. But, if you are blissfully ignorant of such things or you pick it up with the mind set of reading pure fantasy, it is an entertaining story. Realistic it is not, but entertaining, it is.