Make a Move

By Stephen Gaskin
$2.99 at www.smashwords.com


Freddy Mossman is too young to be washed up as a British SIS agent, but that’s essentially the situation he’s in because of a major screw-up on an assignment in Mexico. As a way to stay in the agency, he’s agreed to manage a safe house lodged in a small-time Parisian porn theater.

While Freddy ponders whether he’s got the right moral code for his chosen career, across town his former girlfriend Holly Henderson tries to fit in with the French company that acquired her former employer and moved her to the home office.

Stirring the pot is Freddy’s friend Jay McFarlane, a talented but not over-ambitious photographer who already has found his niche in life – causing as much trouble as possible for those he thinks deserve it. Invited to Paris to lighten his friend’s mood, Jay has attracted his own set of government operatives.

Jay’s idea of fun is to steal the neighborhood pimp’s classic car or to put Freddy in a position in which he must fight a celebrity’s two bodyguards. He’s not even above insulting the wife of Holly’s boss at the party she hopes to use to salvage her career. In a way, this is a high-jinks book. There is lots of violence, but most of it takes place off-stage.

As expected in a well-written thriller, it’s usually unclear who’s doing what to whom and why. When Freddy’s former mentor Thomas Veil shows up to offer him a way out of his dead-beat job, all the loose ends – Mexico, the spy shot dead in the theater by a gunman wearing a clown mask, and the head and hands of another spook left in Freddy’s fridge – all come together in a very satisfying denouement.

Make a Move is breezy, well-crafted and doesn’t take itself too seriously.
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