Crime: Paul Carson is the master of the medical thriller, having three volumes already published. In this latest effort his hero is another gung-ho doctor, but this time he steps outside the world of medicine into the big, bad arena of the drug barons.
Scott Nolan is an Irish-American working at Dublin's City Hospital as a paediatrician, but it is his work advising Justice Minister Harry Power on how to curb the drug trade that gets him into hot water. An attempt to assassinate him and the Minister by professional hit man Seán Kennedy goes disastrously wrong, resulting in the death of Nolan's attractive wife Laura.
Vowing vengeance, Nolan teams up with his wife's brother, Detective Mark Higgins, and, swapping his scalpel for a Beretta, he sets out on the trail of arch-villain Kennedy. We know that Kennedy is a real baddie because he kills his sister's dog, sticks its head on a gatepost, and has an over-powering urge to slaughter his father.
The two revenge-seekers have to step outside the law in order to achieve their purpose, the detective using US army interrogation methods and the doctor filling their victims, minor figures in the drug world, with enough narcotics to make them confess to just about anything.
There is no great depth to Ambush, and the characters are cardboard cutout figures, but it is obvious that Carson has done his research and has the ability to put it down on the page in an exciting format. And the narrative moves at such a pace that one seldom has the time to reflect on any shortcomings the book might have. Crash, bang, wallop, it may be, but definitely superior of its type.
Ambush By Paul Carson Heinemann, 376pp. £9.99.
Vincent Banville's last thriller, Cannon Law, is published by New Island Books