Age of Kill

At the outset of Cluett's movie tie-in thriller, a mysterious voice demands that former M16 sniper Sam Blake embark on a targeted killing spree across London. Refusal means that more innocent people, including his own daughter, will die. Shifting gun to shoulder, Sam follows the gory instructions as his tied-up daughter squirms cinematically in the villain's hideaway, waiting for dad's slaughter to secure her rescue. Laced with enough violence to slap an R rating on the movie and punctuated by the sighs of babes falling for Sam, the rapid-fire plot leaves little scope for character development; Sam's obligatory twitches of distress barely slow him down. As the conspiracy unfolds, readers glimpse a cross-section of the agents of rightwing activism in contemporary England, but explosive action quickly supersedes political motives in a twist-happy finale that does little to justify the bad guys' artificially elaborate scheme. As the book lurches bloodily toward its corkscrew, sequel-grounding conclusion, readers can't help hearing echoes of another mysterious voice, the one hissing into the author's ear%E2%80%94kill more or bore the reader. (Feb.)