Monday, November 21, 2011

A Quiet Vendetta-R.J. Ellory

A Quiet Vendetta


R.J. Ellory

Overlook, Jan 5 2012, $25.95

ISBN 9781590205082



In New Orleans, someone kidnaps nineteen year old Catherine Ducane; the teen’s bodyguard is brutally murdered. The NOPD reacts quickly as the victim is the teenage daughter of the state’s Governor Charles Ducane.



The kidnapper Ernesto Perez fails to ask for money or governor-level request. Instead he notifies the FBI he wants to meet with Ray Hartmann, a minor bureaucrat in the New York district attorney’s office. In exchange for this meeting, he will inform the Feds where Ducane is hidden. Perez informs Hartmann that he has been a mob hit-man for decades; he has been involved in at least 19 hits and recounts ties to Kennedy and Nixon. The FBI, the governor and the media wonder what Perez’s secret agenda is and why he is picking to chat with a nonentity like Hartmann.



This is a great thriller that uses five decades of Mafia history in the Bronx, Manhattan, Vegas, Cuba and elsewhere as the background to a fascinating tale. Readers will be hooked from the moment Perez makes his demand known and will keep on reading until they learn what his agenda is and why. Perez and Hartmann are fully developed superb antagonists as this time the truth will set both of them free. A Quiet Vendetta is a superb and enthralling story.



Harriet Klausner

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