The Big Hit
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
In Harvey's first new thriller in more than fifteen years, a starlet's murder draws an NYPD detective into a cross-country manhunt
Mongo wakes up, brushes his teeth, and prepares to kill a movie star. He needs a wig and a phony press pass, as well as a very special tape recorder that holds two fléchettes, one of which is earmarked for screen siren Catherine Delure. A bit of smooth talk takes Mongo past Delure's security and into her hotel room, where he completes his assignment with ease. The hit was simple, he thinks. But it is about to go terribly wrong.
Delure appears to have been shot during a robbery, but homicide detective Jeb Barker is not fooled. Tracking the self-assured assassin leads the PI first to Las Vegas, then to California—where blue sky and palm trees cannot distract him from the darkness within the hit man's heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this pedestrian cat-and-mouse thriller from Harvey (Dead Game and four other Ben Tolliver mysteries), a sophisticated assassin, known only as Mongo, poses as a journalist to get access to the Manhattan hotel room of mega-movie star Catherine Delure. Mongo uses a weapon concealed in a tape recorder to fatally shoot Delure and her assistant before making his escape. NYPD Det. Jeb Barker, a member of the task force assigned to the red-ball case, rejects the theory that the actress's jewels were the object of the murder, and somehow persuades his supervisor to send him to Hollywood to identify Delure's enemies, without clearing it with the brass. There, he meets up with the fetching Dana Laramie, the star's secretary, with whom he begins a clich d romance. The mysterious person who ordered the murder wants Mongo to clean up some loose ends, and the cop and the killer end up pursuing each other. Readers should be prepared for lackluster writing and improbable developments.
