Book Review - "Lost Causes" by Richard Nichols

I love a good international thriller, having grown up devouring Ian Fleming and Frederick Forsyth, amongst others.  Well, now I can add Richard Nichols to the top of that glorious list.  I loved this debut novel.  For me, it has it all to make it an awesome spy thriller.
Our main man, John Buchan (love the tip of the hat, there!), is an excellently crafted character, with his backstory and motivations established by interspersed flashbacks.  We end up with a protagonist who is human, believable, and one we can get right behind.  He’s an utterly no-nonsense action man, and the bad guys can lay awake at night in fear, at least until it’s time to die!  In keeping with the very best of the spy thriller genre, Nichols lays out a superb plot with intrigue and twists, and there is action pumping relentlessly from start to finish.  We have the international locations, we have the guns and the hardware, and we have the smouldering hot femme fatale – all boxes ticked.  Nichols delivers the tough male hero, à la Fleming, and he demonstrates the careful research, à la Forsyth.  What he gives us on top, and refreshingly so in amongst the mediocrity of much modern genre fiction, is a main character who openly and unapologetically both laments the loss of more honest and more satisfying times and lambasts the wimps and woke brigades who have become the scourge of our modern world.  John Buchan’s clear nostalgia for the pre-woke age, those golden days, resonates for many of us.  Bravo, Mr Nichols, and please, please, please give us more!
Cheers, ABP