Author: MJ Hider
ISBN No: 979-8356183645
Review date: 06/05/2024
No of pages: 282
Publisher:
Publisher URL:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ and search for 'tim joseph transition'
Year of publication: 21/04/2023
Brief:
price
£11.99 hardcover, 9.69 paperback
A hushed briefing room inside the British Embassy in Kabul, the sadness inside a military hospital, a terrorist who detonates an improvised explosive device (IED) to kill, besides two security men who fist-bump when they meet inside an embassy wrecked by an IED – by taking us around the world and inside the heads of wildly different yet connected people, Matthew Hider in his novel Transition has done far more than tell the story of the ‘transition’ in the title, of a former soldier turned private security contractor.
The book starts with several necessary pages of explanations of abbreviations and military and security terms. That could easily be a warning sign that we’re going to be blinded with (military-security) science and jargon; but we are not. From the first page we are pitched into the world of a former military man who’s entered private security; a world of athleticism and, sometimes, danger. He’s climbing in Snowdonia, in north Wales. It’s a world where a cup of tea is a ‘brew’, and where you don’t find yourself in trouble, the ‘shit hits the fan’; that private language is significant, as it serves to bond those who understand it. The author is very assured in taking us into that private world; where he could do better, and will learn with practice, is to use discretion; it’s not always necessary to give us detail, of brands of shoes or head-phones, or lists of kit. That (like so much in life) is a matter of opinion; and that said, the author is taut in his telling of the brutal climax of the book. Without giving away the story, it’s set in the corrupt administration of Afghanistan during the western occupation before the return of the Taliban to Kabul in August 2021.
Where he is faultless there and throughout is in his accuracy – not only in the material background to his characters, but in their behaviour. When the main character Luke is about to depart from his platoon – the small unit that matters above all – he tells them that he is ‘sick of them and their nasty, ugly faces’; that rings true about men, and not only in the British Army, who are wont to hide their true feelings behind banter (and swear words).
The book doesn’t fall into the trap of taking its time to get into the action. It’s not at all long before Luke is (with some help) seeing off some men who are beating up a comrade on his way to barracks. The scene switches to a building site, where a theft of plant machinery goes violently wrong. The next action resulting from that crime is another, an attempted kidnap or assassination of the principal that Luke and other close protection operatives is looking after, a high-net worth individual and London property developer. And we’re hardly a fifth of the way into the book.
That choice of title is a significant one: Transition, from soldier to civilian, even if the chosen line of work is military-security contracts in some of the world’s most dangerous places, such as Afghanistan (where the book is largely set, and began to be written, before the western powers’ precipitate leaving of the country in summer 2021, when – as though proof that truth is stranger than fiction – Afghanistan made its own transition, to Taliban rule again). Some things don’t change, whether you’re serving in the military or the private security-military; the shared knowledge that sets you apart from those you are paid to protect. After that IED has blasted windows at the German embassy in Kabul, two security operators note (without having to speak) the ‘red matter’ on the remaining walls. They know that’s ‘graffiti left behind by parts of someone’s body’.
There’s much to like about this book; the vividness of the story, evidently thanks to the author’s own experiences; the way that he can switch scenes and even continents, and take us into the rooms and even inside the heads of people from widely different backgrounds: the bodyguard, the rich man who’s protected, an Afghan ‘rogue special operations dude’. Just as in close protection as in any walk of life, as in writing a novel, it can be difficult to pull off more than one skill; a writer of a thriller may be skilled at action scenes, but less assured with emotions. The main character Luke does have a personal life, and a happy ending (or at least progress) in that regard. Otherwise, the book shows an imperfect world that security people are there to protect, not reform, another reality that the book well brings out. Those security people have to face boredom that saps at their motivation, and bad guys who may kill or maim them. In a particularly poignant scene before the climax, Luke is having beers with a friend who’s in a wheelchair and on medication after injury, who yet explains how he is ‘one of the luckiest guys in the world’, for the good times, material comforts, his family; and – showing men are capable of insight – ‘there are people out there in way worse situations than me’. Two men clink beers.
Although the book (and its excellent-looking cover) doesn’t say so, we can presume it’s a first book. It’s not meant as a criticism to say that the author will do better next time and even better the time after that, unless we or the Army expect new recruits to hit the bull’s eye the first time they go on a rifle range. I understand that the author is indeed writing more. He has a new question to answer – should he stick to writing about what he knows intimately, or try something different? The greatest compliment we can pay is the wish that the author will indeed find answers, and keep writing.
