The only game in the galaxy by Paul Collins

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The Maximus Black Files. Ford Street, 2013. ISBN 9781925000041.
(Age: 12+) Recommended. Science Fiction, Adventure. RIM, the major spy agency in a galaxy where corrupt corporations rule, is at a crossroads. Their best and most sparkling recruit, Maximus Black is drawing power into his own hands, killing as he goes. He has taken care of his psychologist who tried to warn others of his psychopathic tendencies, and is now after Anneke, a clever agent who seems to allude him at all turns. In books one (Mole hunt) and two (Dyson's drop) the two sparred constantly, and this one has more of the same. Exciting, fast paced, it holds the reader's attention as the two sharpen their wits against each other, Black thinking he has rid himself of her forever, but then finding himself indebted to her as she kills someone about to take him out. Cat and mouse has nothing on the sequence of events here.
Set in an amazingly technological world, where people can change their images with a drug, or use a different drug to take someone's memory, the background is all heavy metal, a very nasty virus, shape changing and weaponry. The thinking reader will be alert to the chops and changes which occur with great rapidity as the two try to outfox the other, but drugged Anneke is not quite sure of who she can trust.
Anneke who also works for RIM, knows that there is a mole within the company, and so is out to find that person and eliminate him. Her resolute aim brings her closer to Black, and the reader who has read the previous two in the series, will be kept gripped by the book, reading to the end to find out what happens to these two major players, especially after they both realise that there they are not the masters of their own destinies.
Fran Knight

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