“It ain’t about how hard you can hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

— Rocky Balboa

My only regret with regard to Richard Nichols’ Lost Causes is that I left it lingering on my To Be Read pile for so long. This action thriller does not lack in either action or thrills, and Nichols expertly weaves a fantastic narrative that blends a spy novel with a mystery with a character study all while making the plot both prescient and exciting. In doing so he introduces a protagonist that is a relentless machine in his aims (hence the Rocky quote), but human in his thoughts, loves, desires, and hates.

The man in question is John Buchan. But is he really? You see, John went by another name long ago, a name that went along with another life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Lost Causes begins with another character, a British agent in a harrowing situation somewhere in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, and he is desperate to complete his mission. He has discovered a secret of monumental importance, but has himself been discovered and is on the run, only moments ahead of pursuers who mean to silence him forever. In a last, harried attempt to communicate what he has uncovered he makes a phone call.

That call sets off the story proper of Lost Causes and gives us our first introduction to John Buchan; spy, soldier, survivor, and the anvil against which this story will be shaped. In terms of plot, suffice it to say that Buchan is advised of the now-missing, presumed to be dead agent’s aborted mission, and is assigned to investigate what went wrong, and discover the bigger mystery of the nefarious villains that are believed to be involved. What results from this investigation is full-throttle action and adventure, with a healthy dose of apprehension for the protagonist’s well-being at some of the situations he finds himself in.

Aside from the main plot, however, the author intertwines a captivating interstitial story throughout the book that introduces us to Buchan before he was the British agent we see today, when he was a former soldier named Charlie Hook. How he transformed from Hook to Buchan is slowly, but quite brilliantly meted out as the main storyline unfolds, and the tragic, dramatic event that led the soldier to become the spy makes more and more of the main character’s motivations and personality come into focus.

A major underlying feature of that personality is that Buchan is a man at a crossroads, and you feel that in a way he is an embodiment of both his adopted England (via Rhodesia) in particular, and the Western world in general. He senses and sees the world that his forefathers fought and died for disappearing, often being given away without a fight. He sees the modern world impinging on old traditions, sees depravity where he once saw wholesomeness, and he questions whether what he is fighting for, struggling to save, is worth that struggle. Nichols plays this theme out masterfully, in evolution from Hook to Buchan, and even beyond as you feel that the protagonist toward the end of the story is not quite the same man you were introduced to.

A final note would be about Nichols’ writing style, which is often simultaneously brutal and beautiful. His sentences at times feel like prose, fitting togethers multiple sentences and thoughts like jigsaw pieces to form glorious scenes. This is quite unusual given the amount of action and adventure that this novel is filled with, and it is truly a pleasure for the reader throughout.

Pick Lost Causes up on Kindle, Hardcover, or Audiobook on Amazon here.