Reviewed by Robert Goodman.
By Anthony Mosawi, Penguin, $19.99.
The elevator pitch of Anthony’s Mosawi’s latest novel In Harm’s Way would be something like: Stranger Things meets Spooks. One of the main characters has powers of precognition and she is being run by the British Government Communications Headquarters, aka GCHQ, to help it neutralise terrorist threats. That main character, Sara Eden appeared in Mosawi’s first book Trust No One but no knowledge of that book is needed to enjoy In Harm’s Way.
When the book opens, Eden is being tested. Robert Waterman, the head of GCHQ has been tipped off to her by his boss Salt. Eden has come forward offering her services but Waterman does not believe that she has the abilities that Salt says she does. So Eden is put on a police operation which involves rave parties and missing girls. When she is successful, but injured, Waterman puts her on a potential international terrorism job. But soon the risk has come much closer to home and she has to join forces with MI5 (without revealing her powers) to track down some domestic terrorists.
Sara’s powers are hard to pin down and seem to be: whatever the plot requires. When the book opens it seems she gets her visions from touching people. But soon she is also getting visions from objects associated with people and then, when the job requires it, from photographs of people. It also seems that what she can see is a potential future and when she inserts herself into that scenario she loses the ability to know what might happen to her. None of it bears thinking about for too long, it is a case of either buying the premise and going with the flow or not bothering in the first place.
In Harm’s Way is a fairly ordinary thriller made slightly better by the inclusion of spooky mind powers. Sara, does not only have physical super powers but is trained in combat which allows for some fairly intense fight scenes. The conspiracy is an interesting one and Mosawi builds the tension well. Besides Eden and Waterman, a fairly large cast of characters is introduced, including potential MI5 love interest Riz, his compromised boss Shaw, and Sara’s slightly less powered brother. But not much is done with them giving the impression that Mosawi has a series in mind.
