My grateful thanks to the author, Rob Sinclair, for a copy of The Red Cobra in return for an honest review.

I’m lucky enough to have met Rob Sinclair and he’s lovely so I’m delighted that in my AWOL month of April when I’m avoiding blog tours I actually have had time to read Rob’s latest book The Red Cobra, especially as I also have three more of Rob’s books on my TBR awaiting review. Rob has previously appeared on the blog with a great guest post that you can read here.

The Red Cobra is the first in a new series from Rob and is published today, 4th April 2017, by Bloodhound. The Red Cobra is available for purchase in e-book and paperback here.

The Red Cobra

Carl Logan dedicated nearly twenty years of his life to the Joint Intelligence Agency. Now living in a secret location, under the new identify of James Ryker, he wants nothing more than to be left alone, the chance to start a new life away from chaos, violence, destruction and deceit.

It’s not long, however, before Ryker’s short-lived idyll is destroyed when he is tracked down by Peter Winter, his ex-boss at the JIA. Winter brings with him news of the murder of a woman in Spain, Kim Walker, whose fingerprints match those of one of Ryker’s former adversaries who’s been missing presumed dead for years – an infamous female assassin known as the Red Cobra.

A cyberattack at the JIA led to the Red Cobra’s profile being compromised, and Winter believes JIA agents may now be at risk too, Ryker included.

But Ryker knew the elusive Red Cobra better than anyone, and when he sees the grisly pictures of Kim Walker’s corpse, he has news for Winter – she isn’t the assassin at all …

So just who is the mystery dead woman? And where is the real Red Cobra?

My Review of The Red Cobra

James Ryker thinks he just wants to put his past behind him and live a peaceful life. The trouble is, we don’t always get, or know, what we want.

Crikey The Red Cobra opens with an action packed scene and it pretty well doesn’t let up for the rest of the novel. Short chapters with cliffhanger endings add a breathless pace so that The Red Cobra is a really exciting read. I genuinely found it heart-thumpingly exciting and the events even pervaded my dreams at night! There’s quite a bit of violence but Rob Sinclair also knows less is more so he is a master of suggestion as well as description making for an elevated pulse rate in his readers.

Speaking of description, I thought the details given were perfectly balanced so that I had a clear picture of people and places in my head without a single word of unnecessary padding so that I felt totally immersed in the narrative. I truly did exclaim aloud as I read as the imagery felt very visual, almost like watching a film, and I could easily envisage The Red Cobra as an exciting television series.

What I enjoyed so much was that this is not just a police procedural novel. Ryker has a past and he’s certainly not a policeman. There’s a psychological element that I found tightly plotted and intelligently written. There’s action, violence, pace and drama, but there’s relationships and reasoning too. I understood the motivations of the characters and loved the way Rob Sinclair uncovered the details as a drip feed so that I found out aspects at the same time as those in the book. This made me feel I was part of the action.

As I read the last paragraph I felt devastated that I didn’t have the next book in the series to leap into straight away. This is my first Rob Sinclair read, but what a book to begin with. The Red Cobra is exciting, well written and absorbing – definitely a ‘can’t put it down thriller’. I loved it.

About Rob Sinclair

Rob is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling Enemy series of espionage thrillers featuring embattled agent Carl Logan.

His explosive debut, Dance with the Enemy, was published in 2014 and introduced the world to the enigmatic Carl Logan. The second novel in the series, Rise of the Enemy, was released in April 2015, with the third, Hunt for the Enemy, being released in February 2016. The Enemy series has received widespread critical acclaim with many reviewers and readers having likened Rob’s work to authors at the very top of the genre, including Lee Child and Vince Flynn.

Rob’s pulsating psychological thriller Dark Fragments, released by Bloodhound Books in November 2016, has been described as ‘clever’ and ‘chilling’ and an ‘expertly crafted’ story.

Rob began writing in 2009 following a promise to his wife, an avid reader, that he could pen a ‘can’t put down’ thriller. He worked for nearly 13 years for a global accounting firm after graduating from The University of Nottingham in 2002, specialising in forensic fraud investigations at both national and international levels. Rob now writes full time.

Originally from the North East of England, Rob has lived and worked in a number of fast paced cities, including New York, and is now settled in the West Midlands with his wife and young sons.

You can follow Rob on Twitter, visit his website and find him on Facebook.