Mark is a henchman who has served the Agency for several years, surviving numerous bosses’ demises at the hands of talented superspies. The overwhelming majority of the time, he and his fellow minions are sitting bored, waiting for something to happen. Mark, being a reader, has an idea: why not start a book club? Such is the premise of The Henchman’s Book Club, a loosely organized novel that sees Mark and other mooks surviving a series of misadventures while occasionally mentioning books. Were it not for the ending, I’d say the books have a fairly marginal role. This is largely a comedy-action book, with fun writing and exaggerated characters. There’s an obvious James Bond expy — the man who keeps ruining Mark’s various bosses’ plans — as well as a foul-mouthed American equivalent. The latter is so violent and obscene another character asks him if he doesn’t have Tourettes. As a parody of action-crime films, its fun enough: I enjoyed the writing far more than the actual plot. There’s an edgy playfulness that sometimes dips into crassness, though, especially in the treatment of women who are femme fatales or eye candy. I’m fairly sure that’s meant to mock the macho posturing of spies and supervillains—especially considering that in Cancelled, most of the characters were women and presented without objectification (the main character’s girlfriend being a partial exception). If you enjoyed spoofs like OSS-117, you may enjoy this.

“WELL, I THOUGHT it was bollocks,” said Mr Cooper, stunning no one. This was Mr Cooper’s assessment of everything: films, music, museums, exhibitions or roller coasters. In fact, if you’d thought of it, spent five years developing it, registered patents to protect it, trademarks and copyrights, then employed a team of highly skilled and dedicated professionals to put it all together, Mr Cooper would take one look at it and dismiss it as bollocks without breaking his train of thought. In this case, we were talking about a book.

But most of all, Bill just missed making a difference; even if that difference was invariably a terrifying plot that threatened to destabilise the entire free world. But like Bill said, it was just nice to be a part of something.

“No,” she replied. “But my father’s Professor Days… or at least, was.”
“Who’s your dad now?” I asked.
“No, I mean, he’s dead,” Glory amended

If there’s one rule I’ve tried to live my life by it’s never get taken away to be dealt with later. If you’re going to get killed, try to get it done and dusted in the first few minutes because no good ever came of giving disgruntled sadists a few hours to ponder the problem at their leisure.