Seventeen - John Brownlow

[Mister Hobgoblin]

Seventeen is a fast paced action thriller in the Bourne Identity style. Our main character is a spy/hitman type who is commissioned by unspecified governments to undertake contract assassination work. He claims to have no name any more; he is known just by his number: Seventeen. 

 

The novel is narrated in the first person, pretty much in the form of a confession to camera - so various usages of the second person to represent direct speech to the reader; plenty of exposition and explanation, and also reflection on the events that are unfolding, reassuring the reader that Seventeen will come through it all unscathed to be able to do the telling. Maybe this is meant to create immediacy, but it actually feels a bit like Masterchef. 

 

Seventeen is supposed to be the best in the industry - having taken over from Sixteen after the latter upped and disappeared. Seventeen is one of these perfect spies who can predict everyone's precise moves, can trace anyone through conveniently inserted unique details, whose gun never jams and whose memory is infallible. And you kinda go along with it because the premise seems interesting for a while. 

 

After about a third of the novel, it becomes quite clear how it is all likely to pan out - and that requires the key characters to behave quite inconsistently with what they have said and done up to that point; and to know things they could not possibly know. The absence of fixed names becomes a narrative problem as characters have to address one another using pseudonyms they could not have known.  It becomes progressively less interesting and descends into silliness. By the end, I really couldn't suspend disbelief and the final scenes - full of explosions and gunfire - just seemed to be included as a contractual requirement. Every action movie needs a fiery crescendo. 

 

Seventeen is a quick, easy read. It is mostly entertaining. But it is also fundamentally flawed and something of a cliche. 

 

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