Tara Chace, Greg Rucka's British intelligence agent, is back in The Last Run, a novel that ties directly into the author's Oni Press Queen and County comics series. It's probably the best novel of the series (the two previous books are A Gentleman's Game and Private Wars), especially when it comes to fast-moving. This one clips along as Tara is inserted into Iran to bring out a long-hidden informant who is also a member of the Supreme Leader's family. But once she gets there things are not quite what they seem to be. Stranded and wounded, Tara has to take a major leap of faith to get where she wants to go: Home.
The Last Run scared me, to be honest. Rucka stopped doing the Queen and Country comics series a while back. I say stopped as opposed to ended, because there's always a chance it'll come back. So the title alone of the new Chace novel immediately signaled to me the possibility of someone--maybe even Tara herself--either dying or hanging it up. The book begins with Tara indicating it's time for her to stop being "Minder One" and move over to the missions planning desk. Nine years is an eternity as a field agent. The Last Run is definitely just that for someone, though. I'll leave it to you to find out who.
I wish someone would take the whole Queen and Country experience--close to 50 comics (with assorted mini-series and trades) and 3 novels--and turn it into another great AMC or FX series, ala The Walking Dead. A deep, fascinating, character-filled treasure trove, Q&C would make a wonderful series. But maybe the time is past for a thoughtful, character-driven counter-terrorism TV show. 24 is dead, and Rubicon died after just one seson. And Rucka himself seems to be moving on, to a new publisher and what looks to be a new series of books, although in a recent podcast interview, he mentioned The Last Run is the end of what he referred to as Queen and Country Volume 1. I hope he'll return to Tara (the secret agent, not the fictional southern mansion) soon.
Recent Comments