2024 the best of me dawson review

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John Milton is the man the government calls when they want a problem to go away... but what happens when he’s the one who needs to disappear?

After a botched job leaves a bloody trail, government assassin John Milton does the one thing he’s never done before: he hides.

Disappearing into London’s bustling East End and holing up in a vacant flat, Milton becomes involved with his neighbour Sharon and her troubled son Elijah, who are caught in an increasingly bloody turf war between two rival gangs.

Unable to ignore the threat, Milton sets about protecting mother and son, meeting violence with violence. But his involvement puts him in the sights of the government’s next best killer, and before long Milton is not just fighting to save a family and a home - he’s fighting to stay alive...

If you like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp, and Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne, you won't be able to put down the compulsively addictive John Milton series.

From the Publisher

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00DUFCHVM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Unputdownable Thrillers (January 3, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 3, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1219 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
Reviewer: SteveT
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: James Bond with a troubled conscience?
Review: This is the first full novel in the John Milton series but it's fair to say that I'll be back for more. Milton is an interesting character, lethally dangerous but conflicted, and the events that he precipitates in this novel - although done for the right reasons, as he sees them - are not likely to give him any relief for the crimes that he feels he needs to atone for.The book is superbly written, moving along at a fast pace and with set piece scenes that unfold cinematically. That's doubly impressive given the restricted scope - this is no rambling action story with dozens of bad guys conveniently throwing themselves in front of the hero's gun - this is closed in, constricted, and oppressive, set in a superbly realized contemporary London estate with all the attitude, language and ambition that you would expect. Setting the climax amidst the riots of 2011 is another clever move, and we can see as Milton's quest reached its conclusion just as the temperature reaches boiling point. The final shoot-out coincides with the worst of the violence in a nice touch.The characters are well put together, the dialogue is authentic, the plotting is great. I'm as impressed with this as I was with Dawson's Black Mile, with this book showing that he has the range to tackle something completely different to that 40's set police procedural. A really good read, I could hardly put it down.

Reviewer: Mike Logsdon
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very good, but protagonist is morally dubious
Review: British author Mark Dawson is a success story. Having penned a long litany of novels, the first of which is “The Cleaner,” this century’s answer to the famous James Bond “007” character of yesteryear, that secret agent for Britain’s MI6 who was bestowed by Her Majesty with a license to kill. The protagonist of “The Cleaner,” John Milton, doesn’t exactly have a license to kill, per se. Rather, killing is his job. He’s a former SAS trooper turned assassin for a clandestine government organization in the UK called Group 15. He kills the worst of the worst. And he’s been doing it for a long time. But now his conscience has caught up to him, and he wants out. If only it were that easy.He takes a flat in London’s East End where he keeps a single mother, Sharon, from committing suicide. She’s despondent because her son, Elijah, has fallen in with the wrong crowd, a gang called the London Field Boys, led by a ruthless rapper named Bizness. She asks Milton if he’d be willing to help save her son from the gang life. He consents, only to find that Bizness will have none of that.Group 15’s leader, known only as Control, decides that something isn’t right with Milton, so he has another assassin named Number 12 keep an eye on him. In the meantime, London riots are spreading, a true sign of the times. The novel is more than a story about an assassin who wants out of the biz and is intent on helping people straighten their lives. It’s about the continual struggle for existence between the haves and have-nots. In a sense, this is intrigue and sociology rolled in one.There is one thing to note, however. Milton isn’t exactly the most sympathetic character in the book. There are others with whom the reader may be more able to readily identify. When he spares the boy in the beginning, for instance, we’re left grappling with several questions, such as: Did he ever kill a child before? And if so, is he really as good as he would want us to believe? Another question: Is it realistic to believe that someone who has murdered so many people could ever really change?

Reviewer: M. Robare
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: ActionThrillers Should have Action...And Thrills.
Review: Not a bad thriller, decent writing, but missing...something. The basic plot was mediocre; interesting enough but nothing that will shock anyone who's read more than a couple books in their lives. The overarching plot...hitman wanting out of the business, hunted by his former associates...again, we've seen it before and it's usually a successful formula.But there's something missing. The hero is very...bland, like he wants to be Jack Reacher but just doesn't have the fire. Maybe it's an English-understatement thing, though I've read enough English authors and settings to believe the problem with the hero isn't his nationality. There's just nothing *there*. No hook, no passion, no scene where you go, `Woah! This guy is actually pretty friggen awesome!' Lets face it, even Jack Reacher's first few outings were less than non-stop excitement. A lot of wandering around clueless until the final few chapters where it all *works* and you realize Jack is pretty damn awesome. This book doesn't give Milton that; maybe Milton doesn't have it to give. The `climax' of the book is roughly a page and a half...and literally could have, possibly should have, happened three chapters in.That said, it's worth reading if you have to read in stolen moments, or you just don't want to be engaged too deeply. It's not going to keep you flipping pages desperate to find out what happens next...unless you're absolutely desperate for engagement and wondering when the book will offer some.This is the first book in a series, and introduces us to Milton, who apparently shows up occasionally in the author's other works...but sadly, Milton just doesn't offer enough in his introduction to make me desperate to see his further non-adventures.

Reviewer: Paul
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Really enjoyed the first Milton book! Very descriptive writing style, which took a few chapters to get used to, but it was a wonderful change from the somewhat monotonous Apocalyptic books I've been reading of late.

Reviewer: Rappa
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Gripping novel.

Reviewer: John
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Two grenades go off in a room where he had his gun disassembled and he picked all of the pieces up? Also an intelligence agency can’t track a cellphone unless it’s used to make a call? & why didn’t he buy a burner phone? There were a couple of other marginal things, but on the whole it was easy to read & as it progressed I kept picking the book (iPad) up to continue reading. I’m off to read the next book in the series. NOT like Jack Reacher, more like Jason Bourne without the amnesia.

Reviewer: Gardener's World
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Disgruntled government assassin goes underground after trying to quit, and tries to help a desperate single mother and her son in this engaging, exciting, and beautifully written opening book in a new series. I discovered Mark Dawson's work when I was given a previous novel for a present. I finished it in less than a day - I really couldn't put it down. This is a dynamic thriller, cleverly plotted, which makes it impossible to stop turning the pages. John Milton is a great new character - comparisons will inevitably be made with Jack Reacher, but, for me, Milton is deeper and more complex than Reacher, and all the better for it. After reading this (and the novella that looks back at one of his early cases, 1000 YARDS), he is becoming one of my favourite fiction characters.THE CLEANER is set in the gritty East End of London, fabulously realized here in such as way as to make me think that Dawson knows it well. Here, Milton gets embroiled in the youth gangs that have been running riot - quite literally in this case, as Dawson makes the brilliant decision to set this novel in the period before and during the summer riots of 2011. Milton is a complicated man, a hard man with a heart of gold. The relationships he makes with Sharon and Elijah and Rutherford balance the horror against which they are fighting, the evil as personified by the venal rapper, Bizness.The story that unfolds is fast. The plot is a real rollercoaster, convoluted and credible, and manages to deliver a surprise with every turn of the page. Mark Dawson is a superb writer and it's only a matter of time before he is better known. I'm hope he is going to continue this series, and I'm confident that the books will continue in the same way that this one has. I have no hesitation in recommending this - it is the perfect summer read.

Reviewer: Ameena Rasik
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Amazing unexpected plotsHighly recommend