"I love this book. It's fast, hard, and tight and it blasts through the London underworld like a cigarette boat on the Thames." - Lee Child, bestselling author of Persuader
"British author Simon Kernick shows every sign of being a major talent...Powerful prose, tight plotting and a clever fair-play puzzle add up to a remarkable first effort."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Impressive...with a voice not unlike James M. Cain's in Double Indemnity."-Kirkus
"Kernick's debut is compelling, dark and suspenseful."-Booklist
If British author Kernick's second gritty crime novel doesn't quite measure up to his superb debut, The Business of Dying (2003), with which it shares a few secondary characters, it still has plenty of rewards, including two first-person narrators. The paths of Max Iversson, a former mercenary now working as a private security guard, and Det. Sgt. John Gallan, an honest and dedicated officer trying to regain his previous rank as an inspector, intersect after a routine bodyguard job goes disastrously wrong for Iversson, resulting in the murder of his client and the death of the two other hired guards. The body count continues to climb as various members of a vicious London gang with connections to the Balkans turn up dead while Gallan's pursuit of Iversson continues. Both narrators adopt a slightly arch comic tone, which makes the story less dark and less powerful than The Business of Dying, but the clever writing ("he delivered his lines with all the urgency of Roger Moore's James Bond, like he might fall asleep before the end of the sentence") and numerous plot twists will engage many readers. Kernick again manages to adhere to the best fair-play traditions of classic murder mysteries while spinning a highly untraditional tale. The mix of brutality and humor should appeal to Elmore Leonard fans. Agent, Amanda Preston at Sheil Lands. (July 21) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Murderous thugs, heartless babes, bent cops, sex, sadism, buckets of blood: Kernick serves up a second sizzling London broil. Not so long ago, Detective Sergeant John Gallan was Detective Inspector Gallan, his career on the upswing until the wrong punch thrown at a shrewd, manipulative creep resulted in a blotted copybook, a demotion, and a transfer. But John Gallan is a dedicated police officer wherever you put him. And now he's got a lovely murder on his hands, the kind that rouses the bulldog in him, the kind that has savory connections to distasteful people like the deplorable Holtzes, a powerful, ruthless, hugely successful north London crime family clever enough to have passed 20 profitable years peddling drugs and killing 35 victims with nary a conviction. But Gallan has help in his single-minded pursuit of the Holtzes, though he doesn't know it and wouldn't welcome it if he did. Max Iversson, ex-army special forces, has his own reasons for a personal vendetta against the family: payback for a brutal sexual attack on his girlfriend and an unacceptable assault on his person. In the fullness of time, the two pursuits collide explosively. Compulsively readable. As in his debut (The Business of Dying, 2003), Kernick does noir to a James M. Cain turn.
"I love this book. It's fast, hard, and tight and it blasts through the London underworld like a cigarette boat on the Thames."
"I love this book. It's fast, hard, and tight and it blasts through the London underworld like a cigarette boat on the Thames." - Lee Child, bestselling author of Persuader
"British author Simon Kernick shows every sign of being a major talent...Powerful prose, tight plotting and a clever fair-play puzzle add up to a remarkable first effort."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Impressive...with a voice not unlike James M. Cain's in Double Indemnity."-Kirkus
"Kernick's debut is compelling, dark and suspenseful."-Booklist
