THE MERCENARY OF URGA

A skilled assassin tries to rescue British troops being held by a sadistic baron after World War I in Harries’ latest installment of his Tales of the Sica thriller series.

In 1920, Leon Harries is one of the best professional killers the British secret service has; he’s descended from a clan of assassins whose history goes back 2,000 years, and he knows his talents are incomparable. Capt. Sir Mansfield Smith-Cumming, chief of the foreign branch of the British Secret Intelligence Bureau, has an important mission for him. The Great War has ended, Europe is in disarray, and the dastardly Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg has kidnapped and taken control of a group of British soldiers. As the captain tells Leon, “We are talking about a man with the ability to rise from the depths of depravity and land on a level of deviancy and debauchery that hasn’t fouled the earth since Attila the Hun.” Leon would rather call it a day and pass his prized sica, or dagger, on to another family member, but the British need their boys back, and the baron is planning on invading Mongolia. Enter Countess Catherine von Merenberg, granddaughter of Tsar Alexander II, who’s a skilled pilot. She flies Leon over Europe and Asia in 400-mile hops, dodging warlords and imminent doom, until they reach their target: the horrible baron. Harries’ historical adventure gets off to a slow start, with background information and cameos from real-life figures such as Winston Churchill filling too much space when a more streamlined approach to the complicated narrative would have worked much better. That said, the work delivers enough historical pomp and bombast to make the story engaging and, at times, hair-raising even as it remains fully grounded in the realities of a postwar world. Throughout, the author displays a notable knack for spinning a yarn, and his story of a just assassin in a world of power-hungry warriors is inventive and tirelessly imaginative.

A grand postwar adventure that’s dramatic, flashy, and pleasantly offbeat.