Dead of the Winter Sun

Dead of the Winter Sun is the third Lorne Turner novel and what a book! Lorne is a wonderful broken hero and his entourage are great foils to his stoic soldier tough guy act. In this book we have Ella and Heather saving him from complete mental collapse, while we learn more about Eddie Rice, who was in Counting Crows, and a new guy Paul Cole, the GCHQ contact. These new characters are welcome additions to the cast and we can’t wait to see them again. The story itself is a familiar trope, big global business looking to make more money from the vulnerable, but this time it’s very personal to Lorne. This time it’s soldiers who will be affected.

Joe Talon combines the past, the present, the mundane and the supernatural, to stunning effect. These books are real page-turners and the light touch of humour driven by the characters, prevents the stories from being an onslaught of darkness. This is one of the amazing things about Talon’s writing, the constant ebb and flow of light and dark, humour and despair, vulnerability and strength. This, combined with an epic handling of location and description, make these books positively cinematic.