Demolition Angel - Softcover

Crais, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1409138232 ISBN 13: 9781409138235

Publisher: Orion, 2012

Synopsis

The clock is ticking for Carol Starkey, tenacious detective - and bomb survivor . . .

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.

Starkey 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:

Crais breaks new ground with a nervy, absorbing thriller . . . Intricate, hair-trigger plot involving bomber's vanity and copycat killer but, in the first place, succeeding brilliantly as a blow-by-blow account of the duel between two single-minded protagonists who belong to opposing sides of the same elite . . . A police procedural which fiercely takes off in ways you don't expect. Harsh, gruelling and utterly compelling. As good as they come (LITERARY REVIEW)

Gritty, graphic and gripping, this is a terrific addition to the genre (IRISH INDEPENDENT)

Acclaimed for his Elvis Cole mystery series, Robert Crais deserves further garlands for this stand-alone crime novel. The book features one of the most complex heroines to grace a thriller since Clarice Starling locked eyes with Hannibal Lecter, a deliciously spooky villain in the person of a mad bomber known as Mr. Red, and an aggressively involving plot! ...this novel gets high marks for originality, and even higher ones for suspense and, above all, for multidimensional, wounded characters who give all the excitement a rare depth (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)

Vivid characterisation and edgy storytelling blaze with energy and style, pushing the boundaries of contemporary LA noir to new heights. Demolition Angel is a cracker (SUNDAY TRIBUNE)

One of Crais's skills is to draw us inside the minds - minds as complex and delicate as detonating devices - of these two driven, obsessive individuals . . . it is vigorous, hard LA but with tremendous range . . . The taut terror of the ending is pure audio-cinema. Don't miss it (OBSERVER)

Crais is one of the new crime writers, along with Robert Ferrigno and Michael Connelly, whose vivid characterisation and edgy storytelling blaze with energy and style, pushing the boundaries of contemporary LA noir to new heights. DEMOLITION ANGEL is a cracker (SUNDAY TRIBUNE)

In Starkey, Crais has created a larger than life character with whom the reader can easily empathise and follow through thick and thin. A big, ambitious book this, and one that is eminently satisfying (IRISH TIMES)

With DEMOLITION ANGEL Robert Crais is shooting for the big time with all guns blazing (GUARDIAN)

A cracker . . . The action is pushed forward from one well-realised scene to the next, and he keeps the dialogue snappy (SPECTATOR)

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1409138232
• ISBN 13: 9781409138235
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384