Demolition Angel - Hardcover

Crais, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0752832174 ISBN 13: 9780752832173

Publisher: Orion, 2000

Synopsis

Robert Crais' massive new thriller takes a break from Elvis Cole and introduces a new heroine; bomb victim and tenacious detective Carol Starkey. It is a novel of personal obsession, rivalry, corruption and breath-taking violence.

John Michael Fowles has a natural talent: he understands explosives. He has a feel for them. It is a talent which he fully expects will take him onto the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Along the way he will match himself against the best - the FBI's elite team of bomb technicians and one person in particular - Carol Starkey, Detective in the LAPD Criminal Conspiracy Section. She is a woman who died for two minutes and forty seconds after being blown up by one of his bombs, and Fowles dearly wants her dead again. As the FBI attempt to find the link behind a series of bomb explosions that have been designed to kill their technicians, Special Agent Ben Williams stumbles on the bomber's secret: his desire to kill Starkey. If Williams can keep this from Starkey he can set a trap and catch the bomber. A trap that uses Carol Starkey as bait.

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:

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


"

"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: Orion
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0752832174
• ISBN 13: 9780752832173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 386