Book Review: The Rogue Gentleman Series by Brian Drake

Author and blogger Brian Drake has published a trio of short, action-packed adventure stories under the series title The Rogue Gentleman. Right now there are currently three, with a fourth story on the way that'll probably be sold as part of a four-story omnibus. I'll quote the Amazon description for the first book below:

Steve Dane, The Rogue Gentleman, an international adventurer who rights wrongs wherever he finds them, fails to prevent a young woman’s abduction. But that does not stop him from finding her.

Officially hired by the girl’s father, Dane battles gunman and evades police as he discovers the decades-old vendetta behind the kidnapping; he soon learns that the grudge is just the beginning and peels back the layers of a more fiendish plan that goes beyond a desire for vengeance.

Assisted by his lover, the luscious Nina Talikova, Steve Dane dives head first, the only way he knows how, into a conspiracy of terror the likes of which the world has never seen, orchestrated by a powerful and mysterious woman known only as “The Duchess”.

When Dane finds The Duchess he will sacrifice anything, including his life, to destroy her.

Drake does an excellent job crafting fun, exciting plots, populating the stories with a rogue's gallery of ne'er do wells and scoundrels, and providing us with a lot of battles and banter. Some of the more entertaining dialogue is between Steve and Nina, who duel with flirty quips throughout the stories. Sometimes they quibble and quarrel like an old married couple, but when the bullets start to fly, they are immediately all business.

Short serialized fiction such as The Rogue Gentleman is just what the Kindle is made for, and in a length that is completely achievable by part time independent authors such as Mr. Drake and people like myself. You can sit down and read one of the RG titles in an hour or so, perfect commuter reading of lazy summer beach reading if you like.