Laws of Annihilation

by Eriq La Salle, Lavette Books (Other)

Overview

"Eriq La Salle has emerged as a terrific writer with unique gifts." —Don Winslow, #1 international bestselling author

A war is brewing in New York City, and no one can stop it.

With grit, relentless action, and twists you'll never see coming, Laws of Annihilation is the third installment in the highly-acclaimed Martyr Maker series by Eriq La Salle.

It's another blistering summer in New York City, and a sweltering heat wave stifles the area. Hostility between the Hasidic and Black communities has been steadily increasing since a tragic incident left a Black teenager dead. When two rabbis are killed in a gruesome attack on their synagogue, it has all the signs of retaliation.

The entire city is on edge.

Through it all, Agent Janet Maclin's dreams of becoming the FBI's first female director come crashing down when she receives some devastating news. In spite of it all, she's determined to help NYPD detectives Quincy Cavanaugh and Phee Freeman find the rabbis' killer as more hate crimes put the city on the brink of all-out war. As the body count climbs with the temperature and the tensions, time is running out for Maclin in more ways than one.

Apart from his critically-acclaimed thriller titles, La Salle is a masterful mystery/crime storyteller. He may be best known for his acting roles in productions such as ER, Coming to America, and Logan, but his background in crime fiction was finely honed as he directed and executive produced countless episodes of popular shows such as Law & Order, Law and Order SVU, Law & Order: Organized Crime, CSI: NY, and Chicago PD with Dick Wolf.

Praise for Eriq La Salle's Martyr Maker Series

"Laws of Wrath is all thriller; no filler—a white knuckled treat." —James Patterson, New York Times bestselling author

"Laws of Depravity is a gritty crime thriller, spiritual quest, and love story all woven into one compelling tale." —Publishers Weekly

"Fast paced…Characters are richly textured [and] none is without faults." —Kirkus Reviews, for Laws of Wrath

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728261089
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Series:	Martyr Maker , #3
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	104,659
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

ERIQ LA SALLE is an actor, director, producer, and author best known to worldwide television audiences for his portrayal of the commanding Dr. Peter Benton in the award-winning, critically acclaimed medical drama, E.R. He was raised in Hartford, Connecticut, and educated at Juilliard and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Editorial Reviews

10/23/2023

La Salle captures the racial tensions of contemporary New York City in his gripping third thriller featuring FBI agent Janet Maclin and NYPD officers Phee Freeman and Quincy Cavanaugh (after 2023’s Laws of Wrath). Maclin, who had hopes of becoming the Bureau’s first female director, learns from her oncologist that she has, at most, four months to live. Her first instinct is to visit her close friends Freeman and Cavanaugh, but before she can tell them the news, the officers receive word that Reform rabbis Israel and David Abramovitz have been found dead in their Manhattan synagogue with their hands and feet severed. The twin brothers recently attempted to cool down tensions between New York City’s Hasidic and Black populations following a Black teenager’s death at the hands of Hasids. The Abramovitzes were also vocal supporters of the city’s Black mayor, Rocky Henderson, who demands justice by any means necessary. Maclin, Freeman, and Cavanaugh launch a tense inquiry that La Salle, as is his trademark, takes pains to make plausible (as Maclin notes: “Good police work... was monotonous and nitpicking”). Thankfully, La Salle manages to get the details right while keeping his foot on the gas and making space to explore his leads’ inner lives. This series has yet to stumble. Agent: Rockelle Henderson, Rock Inked. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"La Salle conquers yet another medium. [Laws of Annihilation is] a really great read." — Dick Wolf, Producer and New York Times bestselling author

"Eriq La Salle has emerged as a terrific writer with unique gifts. I've enjoyed his books for years and I love Laws of Annihilation." — Don Winslow, #1 International Bestselling Author

"Eriq La Salle has crafted a pitch perfect thriller that conjures the tension of a city at a boiling point. Laws of Annihilation is an exploration of racial conflict and personal turmoil and will have you flipping the pages at record speed. A startling and shocking and astute entry into the genre." — Ivy Pochada" — Ivy Pochoda, author of Sing Her Down

"A brilliant and bloody cop thriller." — Adrian McKinty, New York Times bestselling author of The Chain

"Timely and engaging." — Kirkus Reviews

"La Salle captures the racial tensions of contemporary New York City in his gripping third thriller. [He] gets the details right while keeping his foot on the gas...This series has yet to stumble." — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2023-08-25
A white supremacist group seeks to stoke an all-out war between Jews and Blacks on the streets of New York after a Black teenager is fatally run over after being chased by Hasidic Jews for defiling their synagogue.

The only hopes of preventing a possible Armageddon reside in the skills of Jewish FBI agent Janet Maclin, who is up against her own ticking time bomb in the form of Stage IV cancer, and a pair of police detectives known as the best closers on the force: Phee Freeman, a Black former New York Giant who is led by his emotions, and the cooler family man Quincy Cavanaugh. Plans to infiltrate the hate group fail tragically when a Black cop posing as a Harlem radical has his cover blown. At immediate risk are the lives of Spider Harris, the Jew-hating uncle of the dead teenager, and Ezra Pearl, the Black-hating grandson of a Holocaust survivor, who is blamed for the teen's death. Both are abducted by the plotters and tossed within yards of each other in a former slaughterhouse, with plans of using their tortured bodies to push tensions between Blacks and Jews over the top. La Salle does a good job of handling all the moving parts, which include Maclin's sense of personal doom (she participates in S&M sex to fight through her physical and emotional pain). But the depiction of the white supremacists never rises above stereotype. And in this, the concluding thriller in La Salle's Martyr Maker trilogy, there are long stretches of preachiness about the power of love and understanding (and babies). "What if he and Spider were in fact not that different, at least on the things that mattered most?" Ezra is finally led to think. Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier did it much better in The Defiant Ones.

A timely and engaging but ultimately predictable thriller.

Kirkus Reviews