Throughout Midnight Empire, readers are treated to some excellent rapid-fire dialogue. It helps to evoke the fast-paced environment that Daniel inhabits. Croome brilliantly creates an air of paranoia. This paranoia stems as much from what is not known as what is. As one of Daniel’s colleagues puts it: ‘We’re winning, or we’ve already won. Who is al-Qaeda anymore?’ Although Croome does not explore in depth the politics behind the war on terror, he does cite similarities between the actions of the United States and their enemies. For example, Daniel discovers that Al Qaeda has used ‘tradecraft straight out of the Cold War, techniques the CIA itself had created’.

The choice of Las Vegas as the location for much of the novel’s action was clever. As depicted by Croome, Las Vegas is a ‘cheap and conceited’ world where mystery and corruption lurk beneath impossibly glitzy exteriors. The description of the poker room at the MGM Grand, with its eclectic patronage and overt displays of wealth, is a highlight.

Midnight Empire is no masterpiece. Croome’s decision to open paragraphs with random lines such as ‘Violence in America’ and ‘Authorship and terror’ struck this reviewer as being rather pretentious. That said, Croome’s skilful prose makes his novel far more than a standard pulp thriller.