North Star

By: Mark Dawson

Narrated by: David Thorpe

When a rogue agent sets his sights on Group Fifteen, Charlie Cooper must draw on every ounce of his skill and cunning to survive.

After escaping an assassination attempt in Iceland, former operative turned Russian asset NORTH STAR disappears without a trace. Burdened by guilt and driven by vengeance, Control orders Cooper to track him down and neutralize the threat.

The hunt leads to Cyprus, where NORTH STAR has fortified his retreat into an impenetrable stronghold. With time running out, Cooper and Control resort to unconventional methods to breach his defenses and exploit his vulnerabilities.

Caught in a dangerous game of deception, betrayal, and deadly secrets, Cooper is forced to question who is truly in control. Can he outwit NORTH STAR, or will the predator become the prey?

©2024 Unputdownable Limited

4.25 Stars ⭐️

I am going back and forth in a kind of crazy order with this series. I think most of that stems from the way that the audiobooks have been released (books 1 thru 4 were released in 2023 and 2024) and now books 5 thru 12 have been/or will be released in between 2025 and 2026 - with several of them still on the schedule to be released further in 2026. Yep, it's been a bit crazy, and it has caused me to completely break my own rule of at least trying to read/listen to a series in the correct order - the order of print publication. Sticking to that rule seems to follow the linear progression of the storyline - the order that events in the series actually occur in - but in this case, we've thrown all of that out the window.

So, this book does follow the trend for the last few books in this series where it is a short story or novella length book. They run about 2 and a half hours in the audio format, but there is definitely a lot going on in those couple of hours.

The storyline has Charlie Cooper going after a rogue agent - code name "North Star"- but instead of letting him do what he does best, his boss - head of Group Fifteen and code name "Control" - has different ideas. For whatever reason, Control has deemed this particular assignment as a challenge, or at least he has made it personal, and he is determined to micromanage Charlie throughout the entire process making sure it is completed to his satisfaction.

Unfortunately, North Star is a better asset than expected and he survives more than one attempt on his life. North Star goes to ground, and it becomes almost impossible to find ANY clues on where he might be.

Charlie decides to go out on his own and ends up finally finding a lead on which direction to pursue. But, again, North Star has planned well and getting to him is not going to be easy.

I enjoyed this short story as there were lots of underlying emotions and tensions between both Charlie and Control, and even between North Star and his pursuers.

As usual, this book is narrated by David Thorpe who did a fine job with the narration. One thing that I have noticed though, is that his accent. when attempting an American/Southern accent, are very off the mark. This is like the second or third book that has featured a "Southern" character (from the deep south of the US - like Georgia or Alabama) and the portrayal of that particular accent ended up puling me completely out of the story. The crazy thing is that all of the other accents he portrays are fantastic (or at least they sounded fantastic to me). To be honest though, I don't really know if they are on base or not. They just sound like they were accurate to me.