Irresistible - Hardcover

Black, Ethan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345433475 ISBN 13: 9780345433473

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2000

Synopsis

While a beautiful woman prowls the city, killing the men she seduces, a sex crime detective hunts her through the streets during the Manhattan's worst heat wave in twelve years. By the author of The Broken Hearts Club.

About this title

Review:

A whydunnit rather than a whodunnit, Ethan Black's second novel Irresistible gives us that rarest of creatures, a woman serial killer, and sets us and his millionaire policeman Voort wondering how she selects the men she stabs and castrates, and how she knows so much about them.

"I love that show!" She's never seen it. "And I never met anyone who works in TV."

--Now he'll tell me the story about his time as a producer in Bosnia. How his best friend was killed by a mine and how it ripped him up.--

"My buddy, the guy who got me into the business", Paul Anderson says a half hour later, "got killed by a mine."

"That must have been awful", she says

--It was the worst moment of my life.--

"It was the worst moment of my life."

We are especially interested because we know what Voort does not, that his name is on her list; Voort is an admirable creation, a born cop with an equal capacity for violence and compassion, one of a family who has protected New York since its beginnings. He comes equipped with an attractive and complicated back story and manages with the best of intentions to make two intelligent and attractive women very unhappy--there is an emotional realism to much of this which keeps surprising us.

This is a novel fascinated by how things work. Voort has to learn the lives of the three victims--a television news producer, an art auctioneer and an anthropologist--and learn what they had in common. Equally, he is fascinated by a sense of the city at large: Black's New York is a city of dreams gone sour and pleasures that are not especially good for you. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

`It would be too easy for me to say I found this novel irresistible. In fact it wasn't far short.... In what I hope will be a long-running series, Black spins a first-class plot and perfectly captures the feel of a city in the grip of heatwave and the fear that a female serial killer is on the loose' Independent On Sunday

'a powerful thriller with a sharp edge and unpredictable turns' South Wales Argus (Newport)

BROKEN HEARTS CLUB:
'Stunning... Fast-paced... [A] clever psycho-thriller... It shocks. It steams. It terrifies' The Washington Post
'Black lowers his reader down into the darkly twisted tunnels of the serial killer's mind and then leads us breathlessly through the confrontations... A genuinely clever tale' Paul Lindsay - Author of WITNESS TO THE TRUTH
'[A] well-paced psycho-thriller debut... Black fashions some terrific dialogue and keeps the scenes rolling in punchy succession. The iconoclastic [detective] Voort could well augur the advent of a sexy, savvy, highly charismatic new icon in popular crime fiction' Publishers Weekly (starred review)
'Thrilling, ultra-hip and completely engrossing' Mademoiselle
'A compelling, psychological thriller' The Good Book Guide
'A raunchy page-turning thriller.' Books Magazine
'A very black, witty thriller with more than a few brave insights into the modern male psyche' Daily Mirror
'Perversely clever' New York Times
'Great characterisation and some fine red herrings' Daily Telegraph
'Strongly recommended... The suspense builds, the sex is steamy, and the conclusion is dramatic. This has all the elements of a bestseller' Booklist
'Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, this highly original crime story takes the American obsession with therapy and spins it to its terrifying and logical conclusion' Sutton Borough Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0345433475
• ISBN 13: 9780345433473
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 391