Book details

Meet John Milton

He considers himself an artisan. A craftsman. His trade is murder.

Milton is the man the government sends after you when everything else has failed. Ruthless. Brilliant. Anonymous. Lethal. You wouldn't pick him out of a crowd but you wouldn't want to be on his list. But now, after ten years, he's had enough - there's blood on his hands and he wants out. Trouble is, this job is not one you can just walk away from.
 
He goes on the run, seeking atonement for his sins by helping the people he meets along the way. But his past cannot be easily forgotten and before long it is Milton who is hunted, and not the hunter.

The Cleaner

A career of state-sanctioned murder has taken its toll. Milton is troubled by nightmares, a long line of ghosts who torment his dreams. He resolves to make his next job his last and, then, perhaps, he can start to make amends for everything that he has done.

Sharon Warriner is a single mother in the East End of London, suicidal with fear that she's lost her young son to a life in the gangs. After Milton saves her life, he promises to help. But the gang, and the charismatic rapper who leads it, is not about to cooperate with him.

As London burns through summer riots, Milton finds himself in unfamiliar territory, dealing with an unfamiliar foe. And when his employer sends another agent after him, the odds against him are stacked even higher.

+ + +

Q & A with Mark Dawson

Q: How would you describe the Milton series?

Mark: The elevator pitch would be this: what would James Bond do with himself if he was sick of his career as a jet-setting assassin? I've tried to imagine what someone like Bond or Jason Bourne would be like if they were wracked with guilt and were looking to make amends for all the blood on their hands. That's Milton.

Q: What's most fun about writing the series?

M: Lots of stuff. It's fun to take a character the audience knows is completely lethal and drop him into a situation that would give most normal people plenty of reasons to run for the hills, and to watch him wreak havoc. And it's fun to write some unpleasant villains and have them look at Milton as a fish-out-of-water Englishman. If they knew the truth about him, they would think twice about crossing him. And yet they don't, and so they do, and so that equals fun for writer and (I hope) reader, too.

Q: And this is his first adventure?

M: The first full-length novel. 1000 YARDS is a look back at one of Milton's last assignments, this one deep in North Korea. This novel is set a few years after that. We start with what is his final hit - something happens that throws him off his game - and when he gets back to London he tries to quit. That doesn't go so well. He ends up in East London trying to help a young mother save her son from the gang that he is running with. The setting has been described as a "UK Clockers," which I can't say I'm unhappy about. Just with more guns. And grenades.

Q: Who would play him in a movie?

M: Tough one. I like Damien Lewis, but Milton is a little bigger and more grizzled. Mel Gibson could probably have pulled it off circa Lethal Weapon. Benedict Cumberbatch, possibly. Certainly not Tom Cruise... Lee Child, how could you!