Sometimes your enemy doesn’t come from the outside. Sometimes your enemies are the very people you should be able to trust the most. When C has a stroke, it opens up the position of Chief of S.I.S. Crocker and the Minders get caught in the vicious competition between different departments in the service to grab the influential position. On top of internal political machinations there is upheaval within the Minders. Ed (Minder 3) died of an aneurysm and his replacement was killed during his first mission. Wallace is thinking of leaving the Minders, leaving Tara as Minder 1. She insists that she doesn’t want the job, but Wallace calls her on it. Ultimately she wants Crocker’s job, and this volume is an interesting insight into what that will mean for Tara. I was as ever impressed by Greg Rucka’s economy of language and complex plotting. Mike Hawthorne also impressed me with his artwork. His characters are long lean people, who are distinctly British without being caricatures. He has captured the nuances of Tara and the differences in her face and body language when she is working a case, when she is just working and when she isn’t working at all.
N/B — as far as I can tell A Gentleman’s Game falls sometime after this volume in the chronology of Queen and Country.
Queen and Country, vol. 6: Operation: Dandelion
Available in: Queen and Country, Definitive Edition, vol. 2
ISBN: 9781932664898
By Greg Rucka
Art by Mike Hawthorne
Oni Press 2008
