Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 9/29/2014 + 1186 more book reviews

Hardcore-gritty-thriller from Block. I read this one because there is a new movie version of it that was just released starring Liam Neeson. Not sure the movie will live up to the book (they rarely do) because I thought this was an outstanding outing for Matt Scudder. I have read a few other Scudder books (most recently In The Midst of Death) and I have to say this is probably the best so far. In this one, Scudder is called in to try to locate a pair of sex killers who kidnapped a drug dealer's wife and then after receiving the ransom, sexually mutilated and killed her. Scudder has little to go on but with the help of a street-smart kid, TJ, a couple of young phone hackers, the Kong brothers, and piecing together other similar crimes, he is able to get to the bottom of who the killers are. The novel is very graphic in describing the sex mutilations of the killers and overall an engrossing read. This book was written in 1992 and does show its age in some ways. For example, there was no caller ID which could have aided in identifying the killers and computer hackers were relatively unknown! Even given this, I would highly recommend this one and will be looking forward to the movie.

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