A little over ten years ago, Princess Diana died in a Paris car wreck. Though police investigators concluded that the crash was an accident, conspiracy theorists have since been inclined to argue otherwise, insisting that someone--or some group--murdered the Princess. Tom Cain dramatizes this point of view in his sensationalistic The Accident Man.
A journalist by training, Cain seamlessly weaves fiction and fact together in his first novel. The princess's death, we learn, has been arranged by a secretive cadre of international politicians and arms dealers called the Consortium. For the job, the members of this sinister group hire Samuel Carver, a British assassin who specializes in making "very bad accidents happen" to bad people.
Carver is a patriot, however, and when he discovers that the person he's killed is Princess Diana, he experiences tremendous remorse, turns against his employers, and sets out to exact revenge, triggering a bloodbath. The frequent appearance of high-tech gadgets, knockdown fights, high-speed chases, and Russian agents, brings to mind Ian Fleming's Bond.
A fast-moving comic book of a novel, The Accident Man is for anyone who loves over-the-top action stories.