‘Resurrection’ by David Gilman

Published by Head of Zeus,
5 January 2023.  
ISBN: 978180110804-1 (HB)

Dan Raglan is an ex-member of The Foreign Legion and the French counterintelligence service. He also works freelance for British and American intelligence agencies. MI6 want Raglan to retrieve a document of vital importance to British security before the Russians can get their hands on it. The document is in a plane that crashed in a central African desert many years ago.  With his language skills and extensive network of contacts, Raglan was a natural choice for the job, but MI6 also applied emotional bait. Raglan’s father, a British army defense attaché who died in a car crash when Raglan was still at school, had been the officer originally responsible for getting the document out of Africa.

Raglan wants to do the job on his own, but French intelligence insist he is accompanied by a team of about a dozen ex-legionnaires. They also insist that the team is flown into the desert in a Hercules - not the smallest of planes to slip unnoticed into the desert.  Raglan believes that Dragonovic, the Serbian in charge of the ex-legionnaires, intends to kill him once they’ve found the document.

Nothing, including the team’s arrival in Africa, goes to plan. Those who survive the journey to the desert, or who aren’t killed by a local militant group led by Faraj Hamad, are taken to Hamad’s luxurious desert quarters. Here a glamourous blonde – a French doctor with dubious medical skills whom Hamad has kidnapped – pops up. As the mission enters its final stages, the document, Raglan and one or two others of uncertain allegiance end up in Moscow. Elena, a police lady and former girlfriend, helps Raglan. Emotions resurface but time is short.

As the story travels from London to France to Africa and finally Moscow, Resurrection makes for compulsive reading. The action is non-stop. Dan Raglan is a likable hero even though he is undoubtedly more than a little over-talented when compared to the rest of us when it comes to finding his way around and communicating with the locals in foreign climes.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther

David Gilman has had an impressive variety of jobs - from firefighter to professional photographer, from soldier in the Parachute Regiment's Reconnaissance Platoon to a Marketing Manager for an international publisher. He has countless radio, television and film credits before turning to novels. From 2000 until 2009 he was a principal writer on A Touch Of Frost.  David currently lives in Devon with his wife.

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and Wagner.