Brett Battles The Cleaner

The Cleaner

Brett Battles

Delacorte, July 2007, $22.00, 368 pp.

ISBN: 044024370X

Although he goes by the name Jonathan Quinn, that is not his real name. He is a freelance operative who works for the Office, a sub rosa agency based in Washington D.C. He doesn't do wet work, assassinations and the like. He calls himself a cleaner because it is his job to get rid of the bodies, find out information and sanitizing sites. His latest assignment takes him to Allyson, Colorado to see if Robert who died in a fire was murdered or if it was a household accident.

Despite evidence to the contrary, he finds proof that a murder occurred and he find a silver bracelet in the rubble that he puts in his pocket. He returns home to Los Angeles with his apprentice Nate only to discover that the operatives of the office and him are on someone's hit list. Nate and Quinn go to the Ho Chi Minh City where he picks up operative Orlando. The head of the office sends them to Germany where they are to find the people who nearly destroyed the office; what they find instead is an operation that could mean the death of millions of people. He intends to stop them anyway he can but first he has to find Nate who was captured and Orlando's son who has been kidnapped. They are being held hostage so Quinn doesn't clean up their operation.

It is so very hard to believe Brett Battles is new to the thriller scene because THE CLEANER is an extremely well written tale that is on a par with the works of Le Carre. The hero is a James Bond type down to the wit and provocative asides under pressure. His apprentice is comic relief in a tense tale of betrayal, double agents and terrorists. The plot throws one surprise after another at the audience who finds they can't stop reading to find out how it all works out.

Harriet Klausner