The Butcher's Boy

 The Butcher’s Boy by Thomas Perry, a very prolific writer, published his first novel in 1982, and he won an Edgar Award for it. Although I listened to this audiobook to the end, I thought the best part was the introduction, I’m guessing it was written in the early 2000s, by Michael Connelly. He wrote about struggling with people who were complimenting his own writing only to have someone say they still liked his first book the best (The Black Echo published in 1992).  Connelly wrote this introduction at a time when Connelly had already written 12 books, so he lamented that such a back-handed compliment meant his time since the first publication must have been time squandered. He described feeling some difficulty with his feeling that The Butcher’s Boy was also Perry’s best work. Connelly added that his own reaction to such a compliment did eventually change and he was able to respond more kindly to those compliments. (I’ve read The Black Echo several times, and while I think it was a very good story, Connelly is the master of this genre, and he has in fact written more and better works.)

My primary problem with this audiobook was the narrator. The man spoke in too slow a cadence and there was a slight slur to his words, as if he was a bit drunk. The story itself was quite solid as you might guess given its history of winning the Edgar, but I think the novel would be better received by reading it and not just listening. I’m not really motivated to read the second book in the series, at least not in the audiobook format with the same narrator. The reviews of the four-book series have been quite favorable.

 

Shadow Woman

When a protagonist of a series of crime novels gets into a long relationship, you know there’s going to be turmoil. James Bond’s marriage to Tracy didn’t even last the length of one book (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) before she was killed. Harry Bosch, Elvis Cole, Joke Pike, Jack Taylor, John Wells, Scott Harvath, John Rebus – none could sustain a relationship of any length. The two exceptions that come to mind are C.J. Boxx’s Joe Pickett and Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon. But, the marriages of Pickett and Allon were constantly challenged by their dedication to “doing the right thing.” In Shadow Woman, when Thomas Perry had the nerve to allow Jane Whitefield to marry Carey McKinnon, every mystery reader had to be ready for trouble, and Perry does not disappoint.

Carey had already proposed to Jane, and she intended to accept if he could tolerate knowing the way she had led her life. Even if she quit the business of helping people disappear from trouble that was pursuing them, it meant her future life would always be at risk from those were still trying to bring trouble to her former clients. And if her life was at risk, so would be her spouse’s life.

Jane had intended that Pete Hatcher would be her last case, and the story opens in spectacular fashion with her literally making Pete disappear from a magic show in Las Vegas while being followed by his would-be killers. Pete had the goods on an evil casino operation, Pleasure, Inc., and the Board of Directors wanted to terminate his employment contract, permanently. Because the case came to her so quickly and she set up Pete’s disappearance at the last second, Jane didn’t have enough time to teach Pete all that he needed to know in order to stay hidden. By the time she learned that her last client was in trouble, Jane had already accepted Carey’s proposal and had promised to give up her old life. But, she felt honor-bound to go back into the field. And, Pleasure, Inc. had hired the best assassins and trackers possible – so the incredible chase began between Jane and Pete versus Earl Bliss and Linda Thompson.

Perry’s characters are all well-crafted and believable. One does not need to make extra effort to suspend belief in order to enjoy this story. I’ve become a fan and Perry is trying to fight his way into my power rotation – the list of my 10 favorite authors.

Dance for the Dead

Dance for the Dead is the second of eight novels in the Jane Whitefield series by Thomas Perry. I read the first one (Vanishing Act) about 2 ½ years ago, and only got back to this one because I was hounded to do so by two bibliophile friends (M. Gage and J. Healy) who are obviously great fans of Perry. They were right. This is an excellent crime/detective novel, and I’ve already downloaded the next one. I have some books ahead of Shadow Woman in my queue, but it won’t take me so long to get back to Perry.

Jane Whitefield is a Seneca woman who helps people disappear from whatever trouble they’ve been facing, but in this case, the novel started by helping an 8-year-old boy reappear. Timmy John Phillips is an heir to a fortune, and when he disappeared to save his life, his enormous trust was being managed by a firm which is in the process of robbing him. The firm is attempting to declare that he’s dead so they can finish off his trust, and Timmy has to get to court to prove that he is still alive. But, there are people who are trying to make sure that does not happen. In the process, two of Jane’s helpers are killed, and then in the courthouse, she gets into a fistfight with Timmy’s would-be abductors just as Timmy crashes into the judge’s chambers to declare himself alive.

As the result of the courthouse altercation, Jane spends a couple days in jail where she runs into Mary Perkins, a woman who needs to disappear. And so the stories of Mary, a woman who has stolen money during the Savings & Loan crisis of 1989-90, and Timmy become mixed together. The bad guy in all of this is a former cop, Barraclough, now the director of the Los Angeles office of Intercontinental Security. In Barraclough, Perry has created an excellent evil foe with whom Whitefield would seem to be overmatched.

The author takes us into current day Indian culture and there’s a mild thread of mysticism to the story. However, the mysticism is not over-the-top like some of Steven King’s books. Thanks to Gage and Healy, I’m back on track for more Thomas Perry.

Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry

Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry is the first of seven novels about the protagonist, Jane Whitefield. (I previously unfavorably reviewed the book he co-wrote with Clive Cussler called “The Tombs.”) It’s unusual for my wife’s book groups to read a crime novel, so that’s where the lukewarm recommendation came from for this book. Whitefield is a Seneca Indian who moves easily in and out of Indian circles, and her cause in life is to help people drop off the grid. She’s adept at making virile men look inadequate, which is perhaps what this story was doing in a women’s book group. She refers to herself as “a guide,” and in an understated way that is consistent with many of our favorite books which have strong male heroes, Whitefield said, “Sometimes people need help. I sometimes give it to them.”

In this novel one of the men she helped disappear was Harry Kemple, and he ended up dead, so he had not disappeared as well as Whitefield thought. Another man, John Felker, who had also sought her out to help him disappear was merely using her to find Kemple. It was Felker who took out Kemple, so then Whitefield pursued Kemple with the intent to kill him, since she knew he would be after her. The pursuit of these two took the reader into various Indian tribes, their histories, and then into the North Woods for a remarkably rugged adventure. Jane Whitefield is a combination of Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight and C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett. That is high praise to be linked to those two authors.

My response to this is better than just lukewarm, but I’m not ready to elevate Perry to power rotation status. I’ll read the second book in the series at some point, but at the moment, my reading queue is long, so I’ll dive into that first before I work my way back to Perry’s Ms. Whitefield.

The Informant by Thomas Perry

Just because you’ve been contracted by the Mafia doesn’t mean you may not end up in their crosshairs. It’s only business.

Not this time.

When Michael Schaeffer lost his parents when he was about 12, the local butcher took him in. The butcher was reasonably successful at his craft who took really good care of his best customers, the wives in particular. He taught Michael his ways and brought him up to be the best. In this case, the best was not as a meat cutter, but the best in the butcher’s part-time job – contract killer.

And Michael flourished. He scored his first kill at 16 and by 19 he was an independent contractor whose main employers were the various Mafia families who hired him to take out folks who had wronged the family no matter if the target was inside or outside La Cosa Nostra.

But, one lesson Michael learned was that business partners don’t cross each other. When one boss makes the unfortunate decision to have Michael snuffed after a job, Michael takes it personally. He kills an enemy of the boss, cuts off the head, hands, and feet for burial on said boss’s horse farm in upstate NY. Then calls the FBI and tips them off to the burial, landing the boss in prison for life.

Frank Tosca is a ruthless underboss in the old vein of Don’s back in the day. After about 10 years of the mob floundering around with his boss in prison, Frank is convinced that if the other crime families agree with him to kill The Butcher’s Boy (as he’s known by the mob), by doing so will give him the power to rise to the absolute boss of all the families. He arranges a meeting of the main 25 family heads at a dude ranch outside of Phoenix.

Frank had sent a couple slugs looking for Michael, finding him married and living near Bath, UK. Michael is none too pleased, kills them easily, and learns Tosca is behind the kill order. Michael heads back to the US and starts to track down Tosca, but has been out of the game for a decade and wants to know the current hierarchy, so he contact the Justice Dep’t organized crime wonk, Elizabeth Waring, who first deduced his existence about 20 years ago.

She doesn’t give him much, preferring to bring him in as an informant, which he declines. He whacks the next guys up the Tosca chain, a couple right under the noses of the Feds, and learns of the desert meeting. He arrives to find the 25 bosses surrounded by about 200 soldiers. He sneaks in (all those young soldiers had never seen him, only heard tales. It has been a while since he was active), learns of the consensus by the bosses, follows Tosca to his cottage, cuts his throat, and slips out past the coming FBI takedown of the conference; Waring found out where it was being held, too.

Michael finds out the mob is really pissed off. Now it's personal.

A normal guy might slink off to parts unknown, but Michael has decided to convince the mob that it is too dangerous to hunt him down and systematically crisscrosses the country taking out the heads and underbosses of the biggest families, and whoever is unfortunate enough to be nearby. As his butcher mentor once told him, "Anybody you kill by accident is just one you won't have to kill on purpose."

Waring knows the Mafia will come after him, probably hiring mercs to hunt him down and manages to offer witness protection, which Michael again ignores, preferring to continue to take out big shots. One team of mercs learns that Michael and Waring are connected somehow and go to her home near DC to hold Waring’s family hostage until Michael resurfaces.

Which he does.

I picked up this title from a trip to B/N a few months ago and got on the list at the library. Perry has about 20 titles to his name and this is the third of the Butcher’s Boy series (with Butcher’s Boy and Sleeping Dog). If I read Perry’s website correctly, the Butcher Boy books are spaced (copyright date) 10 years apart and the first won Perry an Edgar for debut novel. Stephen King said that Perry’s 2010 release, Strip, was a Top 10 Summer Read and he has had a number of NYT Best Sellers. Not that I know every crime writer, but this guy’s new to me and he really has got the chops. I think I like the concept behind this series, the plotting (OK, there are a few leaps of faith that may seem a bit far fetched), and the character development and will try to find the other 2 books as well as Strip. Hey, King’s opinion resonates with me as another of his must-read lists turned me to Olen Steinhauer and The Tourist.

East Coast Don