Demolition Angel - Softcover

Crais, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 034543448X ISBN 13: 9780345434487

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2001

Synopsis

"Crais is at the top of his game, and Demolition Angel delivers the goods. With a bang. . . . It's Silence of the Lambs meets Speed. . . . Crais knows how to press all the right buttons in keeping the story line taut and the action, well, explosive."--San Francisco Chronicle

Carol Starkey is struggling to pick up the pieces of her former life as L.A.'s finest bomb squad technician. Fueled with liberal doses of alcohol and Tagamet, she's doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section. Three years have passed since the event that still haunts her: a detonation that killed her partner and lover, scarred her body and soul, and ended her career as a bomb tech.

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call explodes into a charred murder scene, Carol catches the case and embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal chilling intentions. The bombs are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians. Now, as the one tech who survived the deadliest of blasts, Carol is in for the most perilous fight of her life. . . .

Praise for Demolition Angel

"Terrific . . . explosive . . . [a] high powered thrill ride."--The Wall Street Journal

"Gripping . . . Crais piles on plot twists . . . gathering the separate threads at the end and igniting them like a string of fireworks."--People

"A powerful, self-contained novel of suspense that has the compactness, velocity, and effectiveness of a well-aimed bullet . . . This is a thriller that works on every level, a pivotal work from a crime novelist operating at the top of his game."--Los Angeles Times

"Fascinating and frighteningly believable . . . Starkey is one of the toughest characters to grace the crowded field of thriller books in a long time."--USA Today

"A flammable techno-thriller with the kind of force that knocks out windows."--The New York Times Book Review

"Packs an explosive punch. Though the pace of the book moves like a quick-burning fuse, Crais still takes the time in Demolition Angel to sketch out some memorable characters: Starkey, haunted and hollow-eyed, covering up her pain with a Bogart-tough demeanor; and John Michael Fowles (aka Mr. Red), a sociopath who gets all sorts of information from the Internet without breaking a sweat. . . . Crais keeps things wound so tight that readers will be getting paper cuts in their rush to finish this one."--The Denver Post

About this title

Review:

Carol Starkey, protagonist of Robert Crais's new thriller Demolition Angel, has been as badly damaged by life as any whisky-soaked gumshoe; a bad moment three years ago cost her her lover, her physical confidence and the job on the LA Bomb Squad that she loved. When a former colleague is killed by an ingenious trap, and Pell, an obsessed federal agent, tells her about Mr Red, who blows people up for profit, but kills bomb technicians for fun, she knows that her path back to sanity lies through this case. With the attractive but secretive Pell as her guide, she explores an underworld where both she and Mr Red are fan fetishes, online chat rooms where his best killings and her best defusings are equally the currency of conversation and where she and Mr Red start a dangerous flirtation. This is perhaps the most suspenseful novel of the year--the demons that haunt Pell and Carol, the hair triggers and high explosives and dangerous minds, all combine in sequence after sequence of nail-biting intensity. From beginning to end, Crais continues to deliver, and to take nerve-wracking excitement--particularly in his almost outrageously intense final climax--further than ever before. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"Crais is at the top of his game, and Demolition Angel delivers the goods. With a bang. . . . It's Silence of the Lambs meets Speed as down-on-her-luck former bomb-squad ace Carol Starkey plays cat-and-mouse with a serial bomber. . . . Crais knows how to press all the right buttons in keeping the story line taut and the action, well, explosive."--San Francisco Chronicle

"A flammable techno-thriller with the kind of force that knocks out windows."--The New York Times Book Review

"Packs an explosive punch. Though the pace of the book moves like a quick-burning fuse, Crais still takes the time in Demolition Angel to sketch out some memorable characters: Starkey, haunted and hollow-eyed, covering up her pain with a Bogart-tough demeanor; and John Michael Fowles (aka Mr. Red), a sociopath who gets all sorts of information from the Internet without breaking a sweat. . . . Crais keeps things wound so tight that readers will be getting paper cuts in their rush to finish this one."--The Denver Post

"The final pages can hardly be turned fast enough, and the climactic violence is tempered masterfully with a sweet irony."--The San Diego Union-Tribune

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 034543448X
• ISBN 13: 9780345434487
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 374