Dead Aim
A Novel
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3.5 • 26 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
“[Thomas Perry is] a master of nail-biting suspense.”
—Los Angeles Times
In this explosive new novel from the Edgar Award–winning author of The Butcher’s Boy, Blood Money, and other novels of “dazzling ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review), Thomas Perry gives us a thriller even more startling than his most recent bestseller, Pursuit. In Dead Aim, an unsuspecting man tries to help a young woman on the edge, and finds himself drawn into a lethal struggle with a deadly adversary--and then another, and another, and another.
Robert Mallon has lived for ten quiet years in affluent Santa Barbara, California, when an encounter on a beach with a mysterious young woman shatters his peaceful, carefully constructed life. Despite Mallon’s desperate attempts, he loses her, and he becomes obsessed with discovering why. He hires detective Lydia Marks to uncover the secrets of this stranger’s life, and what they learn propels them into a terrifying underworld of sinister secrets and deadly hatreds. Set against Mallon is the master hunter Parish, a man with an expert understanding of evil, who preys on rich people’s desire for dominance and revenge.
Thomas Perry’s writing is “as sharp as a sushi knife,” said the Los Angeles Times about Blood Money, and the same can be said about this new novel by the author hailed as “one of America’s finest storytellers” (San Francisco Examiner). With Dead Aim, Thomas Perry gives us another brilliant novel of spine-tingling suspense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though propelled by a tantalizing premise the investigation of a peculiar suicide Perry's latest eventually droops under the weight of flat, unengaging characters and predictable plotting. Robert Mallon, a wealthy land developer, has retired early to the gentle climes of Santa Barbara. While he is gazing at the ocean one morning, a young woman, Catherine Broward, calmly walks into the water and disappears under the surf. Mallon rescues her, takes her home, and over the next several hours, the two develop a bond of sorts. Broward won't tell Mallon why she tried to kill herself, but insists she's now OK. The next day, she is found dead in a local park from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Mallon, crushed, wants to know why. He quickly finds several clues a failed romance, an old murder yet the most promising lead takes him far into the hills above town, to a self-defense training school, where Broward had spent a month, at great expense, gearing up for some sort of confrontation. On closer inspection, Mallon discovers that the school teaches clients not only how to ward off attackers but how to engage in an ultimate form of excitement thrill kills. Perry's 13th novel (after the Edgar-winningThe Butcher's Boy; etc.) again proves a showcase for his considerable talents taut prose, finely crafted scenes, solid research. Yet his initially promising plot winds up following the most commonly traveled grooves, concluding with Mallon, hardly a skilled warrior, taking on half a dozen armed, battle-trained killers. It is equally disappointing when, along the way, Perry either kills off or writes out several characters who seem more intriguing than the bland Mallon.
Customer Reviews
Disappointing
Until I read this book I had never read a Thomas Perry novel that I didn't like. This one was a big disappointment. The characters are flat. The plot develops too slowly and then never really peaks.