Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 7 reviews on
Thomas Perry's Edgar Award-winning Butcher's Boy is back and redeploying the violent ways of his youth to escape a new reward on his head in Eddie's Boy
Michael Shaeffer is a retired American businessman, living peacefully in England with his aristocratic wife. But her annual summer party brings strangers to their house, and with them, an attempt on Michael's life. He is immediately thrust into action, luring his lethal pursuers to Australia before venturing into the lion's den--the States--to figure out why the mafia is after him again, and how to stop them.
Eddie's Boy jumps between Michael's current predicament and the past, between the skillset he now ruthlessly and successfully employs and the training that made him what he is. We glimpse the days before he became the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled hitman who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war, to his childhood spent apprenticed to Eddie, a seasoned hired assassin. And we watch him pit two prominent mafia families against each other to eliminate his enemies one by one.
He's meticulous in his approach, using an old contact turned adversary in the Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department for information, without ever allowing her to get too close to his trail. But will he be able to escape this new wave of young contract killers, or will the years finally catch up to him?
Perry's Edgar Award-winning Butcher's Boy returns in full force in this exhilarating new installment to the beloved series.
Praise for Eddie's Boy:
"Perry makes the distant past as vivid and immediate as the relentlessly paced present."--Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Thomas Perry:
"[Perry is] a master of nail-biting suspense."--Los Angeles Times
"Plenty of characters, plenty of emotion, plenty of insider expertise, but most of all plenty of irresistible momentum toward a fantastic climax--in other words, The Bomb Maker is typical Thomas Perry."--Lee Child, on The Bomb Maker
"The best thing about Thomas Perry's thrillers are the devilishly ingenious schemes his protagonists devise to outwit their pursuers . . . Perry can really write."--San Francisco Chronicle, on The Boyfriend
"Perry is so skillful with the old chase-and-pursuit routine, creates such interesting characters, and writes about them so tellingly, one wants more immediately, not next year--right now."--Boston Globe
"Mr. Perry, in this first-rate thriller, proves as cagy as his criminal mastermind: The reader rarely anticipates his next move. He balances breathtaking suspense with romantic intrigue."--Wall Street Journal, on The Bomb Maker
"[A harrowing hunt-and-hide adventure . . . nobody writes chase scenes like Perry, who devises intricate itineraries, multiple identities and frequent costume changes."--New York Times Book Review, on The Old Man
"Perry . . . builds suspense with all the subtlety of a master chef nursing a risotto to a buttery perfection. It's nothing new to call Perry a master of the genre, but it's no less true for being widely acknowledged."--Booklist
"Perry is a master of plotting . . . Most readers know him from his Jane Whitefield 'disappeared' series. His thrillers, of which this is one of the best, are even better."--Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"Perry delivers a perfect melding of character and plot, light and dark, and he totally immerses the reader in an irresistible narrative."--Booklist, "Top 10 Crime Novels of the Year," on Forty Thieves
"Since his Edgar Award-winning debut novel, The Butcher's Boy . . . Thomas Perry has put together a rewarding string of suspense novels with as much cool competence as some of his best protagonists bring to their work . . . Perry's a real pro." --Shelf Awareness, on The Old Man