The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though a good story with outstanding characters, this is still another contemporary novel with needless, excessive content.

The novel starts with a series of events that seem to be drawing to a conclusion. By page 50 I had to wonder if the book would be blank pages for the rest of the 500. What happens is unexpected and exciting and builds to a thrilling ending. But, somewhere around page 275, I realized I was having enough of the whole thing and wished it over. It wasn’t that the ending was obvious, though seemed so. It was there was a lot of the same thing happening over over again. The story was moving, but at a glacial pace, considering the number of pages. A skilled writer would have knocked this book down to 250 pages covering the exact same ground.

The characters are the highlight of this novel. There was obviously a lot of time and care invested to make so many characters so well rounded. The dialogue also works well. I really like how the author crafted the story so that many of the characters dialogue and actions are not always equal. The extra depth is nearly non-existent in contemporary novels.

That gets to what is in this books and most all contemporary books of the action/espionage/adventure genre: They read more like a movie than a complete story. The author includes in the narrative more than once about characters confusing life and movies. The author, I feel, did the same here, which explains the extra 250 pages.

So, if you can get through repetitious narrative there is a really good story here with surprising depth.

Bottom line I recommend this book. 6 out of 10 points.

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