Tangled Web UK Review March 2007
Butcher's Boy by
Thomas Perry
pbk out February 07
(Quercus)
at £10.99
1980s America. There are a hundred professional hit men in the world,
"maybe two hundred if you count the semi-retired and the novices who have
the knack." Here's one of them, as yet un-named, his latest victim a low-level
union official blown up in his truck. It's Elizabeth Waring's job in the
Department of Justice to work with "the daily gloom", a computer printout of
suspected "hits', looking for "the disqualifier, the one element that would make
it clear that this one too was normal" (I love that "normal"), and looking for
patterns in the ones that remain. And something about that union killing is not
quite right.
The hit man, "a man not fat, not thin, not young, not old, not tall, not short, not
dark, not light" leaves nothing to chance. His jobs are planned with great
precision, his options for escape various and unobtrusive. But one night he is
mugged and his face marked, a threat to the anonymity he needs for his next
job and a potentially fatal embarrassment to his employers.
It's a classic premise – and a classic book. Perry, whose first novel this was
back in 1982, and which won him the Edgar for First Novel, has a reputation
for favouring the simpler plots. That is perhaps one reason why Michael
Connelly, who often follows a similar blueprint, gives it such a glowing
introduction in this new edition from Quercus. "Relentless" is his cover quote,
but that word so often implies stripped down writing and a paucity of humour.
There's no lack of pace of course but the writing is detailed and rich in
incident, taking us every step of the way, alternately, first with (and close to)
the hit man, then the equally believable Elizabeth (many of Perry's
subsequent books have female protagonists).
The success of the book depends on the fact that we root for both key
characters. Neither are given much in the way of back story. The hit man is
ruthless of course (he kills both muggers, for instance, one cold-bloodedly)
but as the book proceeds we come to admire his expertise, his calm under
pressure, his quick-thinking, his ingenuity. Later, mainly in a brief liaison with
a woman he hires for cover, we get a brief glimpse or two of the humanity
beneath. Meanwhile Elizabeth, inexperienced but probing, intelligent and
thoughtful, engages our sympathy right from the off.
Neither is the book without humour, not least in the wholly deliciou s final
pages. A copy of this book has been sitting on my shelves, unread, for fifteen
years, during which time Perry has added close to a dozen novels to his CV.
Nightlife, the latest, is forthcoming from Quercus in April. It will be interesting
to see if he's lived up to this superb early effort.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
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