Book Review: The Cleaner by Mark Dawson

The blurb:

MI6 created him. Now they want him dead.

John Milton is an assassin for the British government, but he’s old and tired and wants to quit. Unfortunately, that’s impossible. Milton knows too much. The only way out of his job is in a box – there are no exceptions.

Milton goes on the run and meets a young mother who needs his help. Her son has been tempted by a life with a glamorous gang and the charismatic criminal who leads it. Milton must get the boy out of trouble – before it’s too late. 

And when his old agency sends another agent after him, the odds against him are stacked even higher.

My thoughts:

This story wasn’t quite what I was expecting from the blurb, although that doesn’t make the book any less good. I thought it would be a fast-paced thriller, assassin vs. assassin, destroy the world, that sort of thing. Instead, it was a much slower tale of a government hitman desperate to quit his job, set against the backdrop of two stories I recalled from the news – the shooting of a family on holiday in France, and the London riots. 

A lot of the story deals with Milton trying to rebuild his life as a civilian, helping a family on a rundown housing estate as he tries to find his new place in the world, which doesn’t always go smoothly. The details were all spot on, and I listened to the audiobook version, where the narrator was brilliant and really nailed the accents and voices. The book gave a fascinating look into the workings of gang life in London. The pace picked up towards the end, which is Jack Reacher-style – no happily ever after, some loose ends, but enough tied up to give the reader a satisfactory conclusion to the instalment. Overall, I really enjoyed the writing style and the story, and I’ve already downloaded the next in the series.