Murder Book - Softcover

Rayner, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060938285 ISBN 13: 9780060938284

Publisher: Perennial, 2001

Synopsis

Billy McGrath, a philosopher turned top L.A. homicide detective, has consistently resisted the temptations and injustices of a corrupt system. But McGrath's dedication to the job has cost him the woman he loves and the daughter he'd die for ... and he's finally reached his breaking point.

So when the city's biggest crack dealer offers him $1 million in cash as trade for the identity of a man McGrath believes to be a stone-cold killer, he takes it. And thus begins the ruin of a good man, whose fall from grace will take him on a riveting ride through the darkness of a tarnished city, and into the deepest folds of his own soul.

About this title

Review:

‘This is a masterpiece... Unputdownable’
Sunday Express

‘Exciting and satisfyingly complex’
Sunday Telegraph

‘Complex, engrossing... an impressive first foray into the genre’
Guardian

‘As good as Chris Petit’s The Psalm Killer, far better than Martin Amis’s Night Train, this is a book which defies outside distractions’
Time Out

From the Back Cover:

COMPELLING, DARK AND DIRTY, 'MURDER BOOK' IS A 'CHINATOWN' FOR THE NINETIES.

The city is Los Angeles, birthplace of the American dream. Billy McGrath is an enigma, half American, half English, a philosopher manqué, but for the fifteen years a homicide detective – one of LA's best. He knows the rules, and understands a justice system that punishes the underprivileged and lets the rich go free. He's an unhappy man, divorced from the wife he still adores and separated from a daughter for whom he's willingly die.

McGrath is called to a brutal, but apparently routine, crime scene. Routine until he discovers that the murdered woman's son is LA's biggest crack dealer, an idol of the ghetto who offers him a one-million-dollar bounty for the name of the killer. Making the wrong choice for what might be the right reasons, McGrath initiates his own fall from grace and, as he strives to redeem himself triggers a series of wild and furious actions that hurtle him through the many identities of corrupt Los Angeles.

In McGrath, Rayner has created a sympathetic everyman who becomes both victim and victor. Set against a bleak cityscape, 'Murder Book' is a dark, violent and sexy thriller that is impossible to put down.

'Written in the fast lane...'.
I-D

'Full of irony and masochism...Terrific'.
DAILY TELEGRAPH

'High-class and distinctive'.
INDEPENDENT (of 'Los Angeles Without a Map').

About this edition

• Publisher: Perennial
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060938285
• ISBN 13: 9780060938284
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384