Melbourne academic Roland Perry is best known for his nonfiction works, most notably for his award-winning biography of the Australian general John Monash, Monash: the Outsider Who Won a War, and his bestselling biography of cricket legend Donald Bradman, The Don.
His fiction works are few and far between, although Perry has established a name for himself as a dab hand at espionage thrillers. His first novel, Program for a Puppet, was an international bestseller. This was followed by Blood is a Stranger, exploring the inherent perils of uranium mining and nuclear weapons. Perry returns with a third topical thriller, The Honourable Assassin, set against a backdrop of drug trafficking and corruption in the midst of Thailand’s 2014 military coup.
Vic Cavalier is a middle-aged journalist who, though he failed to enter the SAS as a young man, was recruited as a spy by the Australian government. Journalism is his livelihood but also Cavalier’s cover for any dirty work his spymasters ask of him.
When the deputy of a Mexican drug cartel is found executed on a Melbourne street, with all signs pointing at it being a hit job, Cavalier is sent to cover the story. Here he meets Thai special investigator Jacinta Cin Lai, a woman whose beauty is surpassed only by her incredible martial arts skills and expert marksmanship.
His search for the murderer takes Cavalier to Thailand. From here, the Mexicans supply lucrative new markets under the cover of legitimate businesses, supported by a Thai government about to be ousted in a military coup.
It’s the perfect set-up for an action-packed thriller. Drug trafficking, murdered drug lords, Cavalier’s mysterious past and uncertain future and the hovering potential of intimacy with Cin Lai.
Perry was on a research trip to Thailand in May 2014 when the Royal Thai armed forces launched the coup d’état. It fuels the story’s authenticity as Cavalier walks the streets of Bangkok with ongoing rioting and strictly enforced curfews.
Motivation is high for both Cavalier and Cin Lai to remove Mendez, the head of the Mexican cartel. Mendez has a nasty habit of holding one-way orgies with prostitutes he drugs to the eyeballs and later decapitates. Cavalier’s half-Thai daughter Pon and two friends of Cin Lai were executed by Mendez in the same manner.
There is no doubt that The Honourable Assassin is thoroughly researched. Perry interviewed a former SAS officer to get Cavalier’s character right. Like Perry, Cavalier is a journalist and a cricketer, and the author says he has also been approached by spy agencies to work for them. And yet he never feels authentic, rather underdeveloped and cliched.
As the novel begins, he is drinking heavily as a way of dealing with his grief for the loss of his daughter and the resulting failure of his marriage. This is a far cry from his heroics at the SAS training camp 35 years prior. On top of this, Cavalier has just been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Accepting that in his current condition he has also remained a top-class spy for the Australian government is a stretch. Cin Lai, the country’s Muay Thai kickboxing champion, is far more believable as a lethal weapon.
On the issue of drug trafficking, Perry adds little more in the way of in-depth detail than what could be gleaned from a cursory glance at news media. He includes no drug addicts exemplifying the terrible damage addiction causes. Money laundering is touched on but not explored. Why the number two man in the Mexican drug cartel, Labasta, is in Australia remains unexplained.
The Honourable Assassin is a novel that has a great premise but is underdeveloped. Thrillers are supposed to be high-stakes stories, an emotional rollercoaster where the protagonist is pitted against the wily forces of evil, losing everything that matters before ultimate triumph. Great writers of this genre, such as John le Carré or Frederick Forsyth, pen page-turners that suck you into the action. Perry never achieves the level of anxiety required to make The Honourable Assassin a terrific read. As an espionage thriller, it fails to engage on anything more than a superficial level.
- The Honourable Assassin by Roland Perry is published by Allen & Unwin
