Books 1 – 3 in the John Milton Series by Mark Dawson.
In The Cleaner John Milton (Number One of Group Fifteen) is done. He's determined his final kills are it. He isn't labeled "Number One" for nothing. He's been the premiere operative for British espionage, a cunning assassin, the one man his victims never see coming. When his final assignment creates loose ends of which he had no foreknowledge, there's one he can't bring himself to "clean up". And that results in a royal mess for Control and a fracturing inside John's soul. Control doesn't want to lose him because he's the best, but he knows too much to be off doing who-knows-what as he enters into "civilian" life. So another "cleaner" (Number Twelve) is sent to find and remedy (aka eliminate) Number One.
John's staked out a dumpy house for himself in the gangland of an English town and attached himself to helping a single mom with a teenage boy flirting with joining the local gang. He wants what they have to offer, and his mother is powerless to stop him even though she's tried. John's efforts only go so far until he meets a man in his AA group who helps keep boys like this woman's son off the streets by introducing them to boxing at his rundown gym.
Things go crazy when John takes on the rapper and gang leader, Control's #12 discovers John's whereabouts thanks to a super-hacker supposedly working for Control. Tragedy and horror lead to John's exit with more sorrow added to his psyche.
In Saint Death John Milton has become John Smith and has worked his way through South America up into cartel-run Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. It's mostly a scary city filled with the fear of cartel repercussions if anyone does anything to upset La Frontera, and the primary executioner of all things wicked and horrific is the son, who has been appropriately labeled Santa Muerte, of La Frontera's leader. La Frontera has people in every position of local government including the upper ranks of the police.
Jesus Plato is the unlikely cop just a few days from retirement that finds John Smith willing to face off against the cartel leader and/or his son after a young woman exposes the disappearance and eventual death of several young women in the area and attributes the loss to La Frontera in her media reporting which has gained recognition and many followers both in Mexico and the US. The cartel is not happy. When an escaped girl agrees to meet with the journalist in a restaurant where John is employed as a cook, as Plato and two fellow policemen are eating, a murderous chaos erupts.
Circumstances lead to John's rescuing the journalist, forming a friendship with Plato, and meeting a Texan sent to Juarez to "capture" Saint Death and return him to a group in the US whose men suffered at his evil hands.
As is often the case, John's situation turns deadly and dangerous but also surprising when interference he didn't expect both helps and defeats his purpose. Add the unlikely ally with both a heart and major courage, and John's personal mission continues.
In The Driver John has made it into the US and is doing part time work as a taxi driver and as a transporter of ice to local businesses. When he's called as a substitute driver by an escort service, he takes a young woman to a grandiose home where a lavish party is taking place. She seems a bit nervous on this particular night only because a former client with whom it didn't end well will be there. He tells her he'll wait for her just in case there's trouble and she seems grateful.
Later in the evening John hears a scream over the blaring music, and suffice it to say he finds a way to get to her. However, she's so out of it, she escapes and runs away from the party. While John's attempting to follow her, a strange beat up El Dorado pulls up with a bunch of bikers and shortly drives away. Though the whole scene troubles him, John leaves when he fails to find the girl.
Well, you can guess where this is going, but it's always an incredible journey to watch John meet the challenges of "saving" these victims. This one involves a campaigning presidential candidate and his lethal campaign strategist, John's acquaintance from Saint Death and his mafioso employers, the prostitute's boyfriend, a druggie bunch of hired killers, and a lovely woman from John's AA group.
Here's a clip from the story that pretty much sums up John in this stage of his guilt-ridden life: (From his thoughts regarding AA)
Most of the people he would have had to make amends to were already dead, often because he had killed them. He had to make do with this. It wasn't perfect, but it was still the best salve he had yet discovered for soothing his uneasy conscience.
John's become a martyr-type, a rescuer instead of a pursuer, a justifier of eliminating evil against "innocent" or what he considers helpless victims in over their heads. He fails to equivocate the threats he's subdued as an assassin, eliminating the evil types trying to do even greater damage to the world in general, with those wicked groups he's taken on in defense of ill-equipped victims. While he attempts to "reason" with the killers affecting the helpless, he has no trouble identifying their evil threats and ending them.
As it always seems to happen, John's overall courage – or perhaps his penitent death wish – affects those around him giving them new determinations to make their lives stronger and better.
**Okay. This is the part of the review you don't have to read, but it's a poignant RANT and sore spot for me – maybe especially because these very entertaining novels are written by a British author who has either listened to and absorbed too much of the BBC, AP, and CNN or generally assumed major facts not in evidence:
The presidential candidate in this story is labeled a Republican and is an inferred racist, a philanderer who visits prostitutes or uses his female campaign workers regularly, and charms his way to be the favored candidate to win the office with his charisma and mega-watt smile. His campaign strategist is a cunning fixer, plotter, and wants this man elected as much for himself as for any other agenda. Well, in the candidate character epitomized by Mark Dawson, the personality types/"moral" practices mimic those of former presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, and the present candidate for president, all Democrats. (It was written/published too soon to have had Trump in mind since no one on the left can quit mentioning Trump's at times sordid past.) I resent this caricature being attributed to the conservative side of the American political aisle, again maybe especially by a Brit. So there you have it. RANT over.**
Profanity present.
Father, I pray you would touch Mark, continue to bless his life, his writing, his inspirations. Please meet his needs and keep him safe. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.
