Total Immunity is the ninth book from American thriller writer Robert Ward, and introduces a new hero, FBI Agent Jack Harper.  Harper is cut from familiar cloth; haunted by past transgressions, struggling to maintain a relationship with his girlfriend, and with at best a tenuous grip on fatherhood.  He is also a man’s man; partial to a drop of the old firewater and to nailing the bad guys to the wall.

The tale opens with Harper and his partner Oscar Hidalgo capturing infamous diamond smuggler Karl Steinbach, the culmination of a lengthy undercover operation.  No sooner is Steinbach in custody, however, than he is volunteering information about Islamic terrorists in exchange for full immunity from prosecution.  To make matters worse, he vows to wreak revenge on Harper, Hidalgo and the other FBI Agents involved in his arrest.  As the bodies start to fall, Harper and Hidalgo are pulled into an increasingly dangerous investigation which stretches far beyond a mere smuggler’s vendetta.

According to Ken Bruen‘s blurb, Total Immunity “burns and blitzes like Ellroy on meth.” Now, only someone as warped as Galway’s finest could consider getting a sixty-three year-old man loaded on crystal meth to be a good thing.  However, I see what the great man is driving at.  To call Total Immunity pacey would be understating the point; save for a few brief moments of relationship analysis, it rattles along at the kind of speed that usually earns an instant driving ban.

It’s also complex with it. As the investigation grows murkier, Harper throws theories around with abandon, turning the plot into a rodeo bull that the reader must work hard to keep control of.  Nevertheless, this is exhilarating stuff.  The solution to the mystery is not easily identifiable, and the villain of the piece is more sympathetic than most.

In literary terms, there’s about as much chance of Total Immunity winning the Booker as there is of Elvis crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster, but then Ward knows this, in fact that’s the point.  Yes, there are repeated references to chills running down spines, and other such rather lazy devices, but Ward hasn’t set out to write anything cerebral.  Instead, this is an uber-macho cop caper with booze, guns and violence galore.  In fact, Total Immunity is so dripping with testosterone my palms sprouted tufts of hair just from holding it.

The characters bear this out.  Aside from Harper, the hardboiled archetype, there is an abundance of brainless brawn in the cast, and writing in subjective third person, Ward explores their unenlightened but entertaining thought processes.  Mr Winky, a hideous bodyguard for a local crime figure, is 300lbs of child-like stupidity, and among the most amusing characters.  He is, however, given a run for his money by Forrester, Harper and Hidalgo’s superior, a man besotted with Hollywood celebrities as a class.

Overall, Total Immunity is an unabashed piece of breathless thriller fare.  If a film adaptation should hit cinemas, women around the world will be coerced into trips to their local multiplex as a gesture of their undying love, and men will gleefully cheer as Harper and Hidalgo hit the bars hard and the bad guys harder.  For now though, there’s just the book, but then – when was the film ever better than the book anyway?

Bookmark to