At the conclusion of his acclaimed debut thriller Smoked, the anti-hero quartet - bomb-maker Smoke Duggan, ex-assassin Denny Cruz and their molls Lola and Pamela - escaped from the Mob with $2.5 million in stolen cash, which is where The Drop-Off begins.

This is a less-than-competent, lacklustre thriller, with action that seems improbable and an ending that is pure made-for-TV.

Nothing about the book strikes one as being even remotely original. The contrived plot gets progressively more preposterous as the story nears its conclusion, and the characters are merely off-the-shelf generic clichés.

With a tired premise, and even that has its flaws, there isn’t a single moment where either the tale or the villains are believable.

There’s a lot of running around the Caribbean island of Saint Mark’s but it’s rarely ever suspenseful.

The story is surprisingly vague about motivation and perspective, which drains it of drama and leaves the book condemned to mediocrity.

Headline, $32.99