Vultures

John Milton, Book 24

De: Mark Dawson

Narrado por: David Thorpe

The vultures are circling. And this time, John Milton is the only one standing between them and their prey.

The cryptocurrency scam was global. The victims were everywhere. But now, the men behind it are running out of places to hide.

Milton never wanted to get involved. But when he sees the damage that the scheme has caused and the lives that have been ruined, he finds himself pulled into a deadly game.

From the winding canals of Venice to the backstreets of Belgrade, Milton hunts the men who thought they could disappear with their stolen fortune. The ruthless kingpin behind the operation is already covering his tracks, silencing anyone who could threaten him. But Milton isn't just anyone—and he isn't the only one closing in.

Desperate men do desperate things. And when the stakes are this high, Milton knows the bodies will start piling up.

For fans of Lee Child, Mark Greaney, and David Baldacci, Vultures is a high-octane thriller packed with relentless action, deception, and revenge.

©2025 MARK DAWSON (P)2025 Tantor Media

Crossover with Charlie Cooper!

I am already a fan of this series (we ARE already at book 24) so I was happy to see a new Milton book available. I tend to listen to these books on audio and am always thrilled by the narration of David Thorpe. Mark Dawson is an obvious Brit, which is very apparent in this series (with words like boot, and car park...) and it makes it flow perfectly to hear Mr. Thorpe reading the book with a British accent.

I will admit that this was not my favorite book of the series. Milton decides to go after his stolen AirPods and finds himself in the middle of a crypto currency scam. There is a new company out there -TrueCoin - taking the world by storm. It appears that people are losing their life savings, and the company has built in too many roadblocks for anyone to retaliate against.

That, of course, is the perfect scenario for Milton to get involved. Unfortunately, with billions involved, the bad guys are not going to give up easily and Milton has to put his Group 15 skills to work.

One of my favorite things about this book was that we had a crossover with another of Dawson's series in this world. We got to see Milton meet and work with Charlie Cooper. So far, Cooper's books have been in a different timeline. I think they've been in the past if I remember correctly, so it was interesting to see these two MC's getting together.

While this wasn't one of the better books - after 24 books, I'm willing to give Mr. Dawson a pass every now and then.

A note for Mark Dawson

As of this writing there are 8 reviews of this book of which only one was available. Our family take, as long time fans of Mark Dawson and about everything he has written, especially his John Milton, Isabella Rose, and more recently the Charlie Cooper series, that this one was a complete disaster and is by no means up to Mark's standards, if in fact it was Mark who wrote it, or if he had a stand-in. There is only one other book, by a different author, that we recall having to fast forward through so much, all the way to the end. Here are the complaints and observations:

1. In this first-ever attempt to mix two characters previously from different series - i.e. Milton and Charlie Cooper - it at first seemed a novel idea, but in the end it was unnecessary, added nothing, and was really a book more about Cooper than Milton.

2. Theme-wise the book trended back to how the John Milton series started - i.e. with Milton helping a person in distress, one without someone like Milton to help them, was lost. Later the series developed more toward Milton battling heavy duty government bad guys - more often than not those of Russian or Chinese origin. This move back to helping the poor and lonely was, in our view, a disappointment.

3. Worse yet, while the book started with Milton well before Cooper appeared, the overall development of the nature of the bad guys - i.e. a European-wide crypto scam headquartered in Bosnia, it took about a third of the book for lay all that out, and for Milton to even really appear in any substantive way - i.e. with most of the overly long description being of the players and what was happening and how, all requiring hitting the fast forward button an endless number of times. I was doing a lot of the forwarding but my wife kept pointing and circling her finger, urging me to forward faster, all the way to the end.

4. While most of the Milton books are filled with action, this book had little action with Milton not encountering bad guys until about half way through the book, and in this encounter he had to run. Then no more action until the final chapters, when even then Cooper takes up more of the role and Milton accomplishing zip other than to arrive late and only then just turning off two generators and hooking up a transmitter which was going to dump all the evidence over to the good guys, once the power was to eventually come back on line.

5. The plot was so predictable that a short way into the book you knew exactly what was going to happen to whom. You just had to grind your way through to get there

So Mark, we know and you know, you can do better. On this one even the amazing David Thorpe was not able to bail you out. We look forward to your doing what we all know you can do, which is far better than this,