Well, this one was definitely better than the last I am pleased to report :D. The plot is good although it does finish pretty quickly - as I suppose most operations on the ground usually do. The epilogue at the end ties things up nicely though with an element of hope. The bad thing that I thought was going to happen at the end of this book didn't, so I reckon it'll probably happen at the end of the next. But I think we'll have a McNab break for a bit.
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The plot of Liberation Day opens with Nick Stone in a good place - he's a happy guy for once. Yay! He has a girlfriend he's willing to give up doing deniable ops for, with the possibility of a good job as a bar tender at the local snooty yacht club while she run's her mum's B&B. Nick Stone? A Bar Tender? In a yacht club? Yeah right... that was never going to happen was it, lol. Anyway, desperate for a US passport so he can stay in the country with his girlfriend and be on the same continent as Kelly he carries out one last job. The job amazingly goes well with no hiccups and a delightful package of a severed head is offered up as confirmation. Excellent... everything sorted, nothing more to worry about, right?
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Wrong. Stone employers have pretty much stitched him up again. It seems that the 'one last job' they need him to do turns out to be the small task of fighting the war on terror (since this story is set after the Sept. 11th attacks). So obviously this is going to take a little longer than merely a quick job to dispose of a few bodies and pick up a pint of milk on the way home. And so Nick is forced to trot off again, this time to the south of France to disrupt the financial chain between terrorists based in the US (posing as normal citizens) and Al Queda. Unfortuately this pisses his girlfriend off (she's not really into violence and has slight tree-hugging tendancies) and she hot-foots it off. Poor Nick, just as things were starting to look up too. Still we knew it wouldn't last.
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And so the story develops from here really. It is a pretty good story and not overly complicated so is easy to keep up with. From a woman's point of view (yes, yes, I know...) it was nice to see a bit more of Stone's emotional side - not much of it mind... bit it was there none the less. He seems genuinely cut up that Carrie (the girlfriend) couldn't understand and had left him. Still, like the experienced deniable op that he is he cuts away and gets on with the job. The two other guys in his team are great characters also. There is some nice banter between them all and you get a really nice sense of commeraderie between them - the scenes described in the safe house are good for a chuckle :) - and at last you're glad that Nick finally has some help with him. Again we see a bit more of Stone's emotional side here as he reveals the bond between them. Alot of the dialoge takes place through the radios that all three use to stay in contact while actually doing the job. This is pretty good as it puts you right in the thick of it along with them. There's not too much jargon in there either so it's pretty easy to work out what they mean when they refer to 'trigger', 'go complete' and 'foxtrot'.
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So all in all a durn good book and a whole lot better effort than the last one. McNab's crown has been fully restored to his rightful position :D
