If you’ve heard about The Mad Mick series, you’ve probably heard the legend: he’s a ruthless tinkerer, a shadowy genius with a garage full of death-dealing contraptions, more “MacGyver meets Rambo” than your average guy. The myth goes that he’s famous for dispatching bad guys with improvised devices rather than being a standard “operator.”
But here we are, six books in, and unless I blinked and missed it, the guy hasn’t built so much as a mousetrap. Not a pipe bomb, not even a potato gun. At this point I’m starting to wonder if legend came from fixing a blender once and someone just ran with it. I’ve read cookbooks that had more gadgetry than this supposed device-happy saga.
And then there’s Barb. Barb is apparently American, born and raised, yet somehow she talks like she just finished a Guinness in Dublin and is about to audition for Riverdance. Don’t get me wrong—everyone loves a good accent. But someone born and raised in America wouldn’t have one unless she was home schooled and never got out and interacted with other Americans.
So yes, the series is entertaining—there’s action, suspense, plenty of grit. But if you came for ingenious death-dealing devices or logical consistency in accents, you may leave scratching your head. Still, I keep turning the pages. Maybe book seven will finally feature a device. Even just a booby-trapped toaster would do.