It doesn't have the electric spark of exciting spy action. It's doesn't have the deep politics and political intrigue. If you wanted to do a story about a soldier in the SAS who got tangentially involved in some IRA activities in the early 2000s then maybe this would be for you. The characters are one-dimensional and poorly defined. Storywise, it is a mess of seemingly random nonlinear storytelling. It's written by Antony Johnson so it lacks the panache of every other Queen & Country story to this point and drags this entire book down. I am excited to get to know him more, but doing this story this way is not the way to do it. Nick Poole is a character introduced at the very end of the second volume so he's more of an unknown quantity as far as I'm concerned. Everything could pop at every moment, and true to Queen & Country fashion, how the adventure ends is surprising and quiet. Placing Tom in the where and when of the Hong Kong handover means that Rucka gets to play in a gunpowder sandbox. Rucka is one of the smartest writers out there right now and his work is always symbolized by every character having a distinct and specific perspective on every situation they find themselves in. Needless to say, because this was also written by Rucka, this was also insanely excellent.
The second arc centered on an operation that took Tom Wallace to Hong Kong on the eve of the British Empire reverting said territory back to Chinese control.
This was everything I wanted and was so good. It has bite, it has intrigue, it had excitement, and it made me ache for Rucka to write an 80s era spy thriller about Crocker as a Minder. I put off reading this for ages because I didn't feel like "it would be Queen & Country", but Rucka writing this story made it crackle and pop in the way that Queen & Country always crackles and pops when Rucka writes it. To be honest, this was the greatest thing ever.
His story tells the story of a particularly dangerous operation he undertook as a Minder (like Tara Chace) during the Cold War. The first arc of this volume centers on Paul Crocker, the D. This volume (which can affectionately be called Queen & Country: Declassified) focuses on three characters from the Queen & Country universe, so I feel the best way to talk about it is to break it down as such. It doesn't seem to make sense that I read this, the final volume of Queen & Country, before reading the third volume of Queen & Country, but honestly I can't imagine reading it any other way.
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