Book details

The new thriller in the Amazon #1 rated series.
John Milton has started to hope that he might have a future. He has a job driving a taxi around the streets of San Francisco. He has his anonymity and his solitude. Being invisible has become a comfortable habit. He doesn't want to be found.

But when a girl he drives to a party goes missing, Milton is worried. Especially when two dead bodies are discovered and the police start treating him as their prime suspect. Milton is a fugitive from the British Secret Service and a man in his position needs extra attention like he needs a hole in the head.

As unpleasant secrets leak out, and the body count rises, one thing is for sure: Milton might just be the right guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Driver is a taut, nail-biting adventure which once again stars Mark Dawson's irresistible hero, the maverick ex-MI6 assassin John Milton.

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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.

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: So how does a government assassin end up driving taxis in San Francisco?
M: The first book in the series, THE CLEANER, sees Milton attempt to resign from his role at Group 15, the shadowy MI6 unit responsible for "dispute resolution" when traditional diplomatic channels have been exhausted. He ends up in the East End of London, trying to stop a young boy from joining a violent gang that will ruin his life. When The Group discover this, they (not unreasonably) assume that he is suffering from a breakdown and send another agent to terminate him.

The second book, SAINT DEATH, sees Milton resurface in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and become involved in a fight against one of the vicious drug cartels there. He continues north, crossing into America, and that's where we pick him up.

Q: What's next for Milton?
M: I'm not going to spoil what comes next, but the fourth full-length novel is called (working title) THE GHOST and will be the most action-packed and cinematic of the novels by far. It'll be set in the States, Paris, Moscow, Hong Kong and Siberia and will include players from the CIA, the Russian FIS and all of the remaining agents from Group 15. It has at its heart the most audacious retelling of a controversial and disputed news story that I've ever had the stones to attempt. I've started to write it and it is going well - very well. I can't wait to share it with my readers.