Book details

"Thomas Perry just keeps getting better," said Tony Hillerman, about Sleeping Dogs--and in this superb new novel by one of America's best thriller writers, Jane Whitefield takes on the mafia, and its money.

Jane Whitefield, the fearless "guide" who helps people in trouble disappear, make victims vanish,has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon, when she is called upon again, to face her toughest opponents yet.  Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso.  Yet the deceptively simple task of hiding a girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events, and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the mafia's man with the money.  Bernie has a photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century,he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time, stealing billions from hidden mafia accounts and donating the money to charity.  Heart-stopping pace, fine writing, and mesmerizing characters combine in Blood Money to make it the best novel yet by the writer called "one of America's finest storytellers,"(San Francisco Examiner).

From the Hardcover edition.

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, March 2000: When Thomas Perry won his Edgar for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America in 1983, anyone who'd read The Butcher's Boy cheered. That remarkable tale of a likable hit man stayed in one's mind long after the last page had been turned. Now with nine more highly original thrillers to his credit, Perry still knows how to keep us enthralled and, even better, surprised.

After several standalone titles, Perry began to produce a series unlike any other, giving us in Jane Whitefield a heroine that I'd have to imagine many of Hollywood's hippest young stars are fighting to play. Introduced in Sleeping Dogs, Jane is a "guide" of a very special kind, a sort of warrior-goddess capable of the most daring feats of cunning and courage who by day pursues a satisfying life off the radar as a suburban surgeon's wife. Her ordinary existence is, in fact, so contented--and her husband so worried for her safety when she's helping mortally threatened men, women, and children--that each time she's approached with a desperate case by a new victim of evil, her first instinct is to say no. But there would be no series if she did, and we would miss her intricately assembled exploits.

Picture the Scarlet Pimpernel looking like the singer Buffy Ste. Marie (Jane's of native American heritage) and equally skilled at disguise and seat-of-the-pants strategy. Isn't that the sort of companion you'd welcome if you were on the run from the Mob with $20 billion (that's with a "b") of their money, its secret whereabouts all stored mnemonically in your head? Maybe you'd rather have the U.S. Marine Corps on your side, but if that's not an option, newcomers to the Jane Whitefield books will quickly learn (and her fans already know) that she can pull it off on her own. A wonderfully entertaining element of these original adventures is that Jane's guiding principle is simplicity. Thus, the reader's vicarious thrills lie in watching the process, the twists and turns of her schemes and, above all, her amazing capacity for forethought.

Blood Money, like all the novels by Perry, works equally well on the level of character study as it does in nail-biting suspense. The novels can be read as much for their remarkable insights into human nature as for the excitement of a first-rate thriller. Surely Perry ranks among the very top of the crime-writing fraternity. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

Jane Whitefield, first introduced in Perry's Vanishing Act, makes her fifth appearance as a ghostmaker, someone who provides new identities for people in trouble. In this fast-paced thriller, Jane, a one-woman witness protection program, is semiretired, married to a doctor and living a quiet life until a teenage girl, Rita Shelford, comes to her door seeking help. The girl is being hunted, having witnessed a mob shakedown at the Florida house she was employed to clean. Protecting the girl propels Jane into a series of adventures involving Bernie the Elephant, an old man with a photographic memory who has kept Mafia financial records in his head for decades. With Jane's help, Bernie steals billions of dollars from the Mafia accounts and donates the money to charity. Not happy, the mobsters use every trick to capture Jane and Rita. The two women cross the U.S. several times, barely staying one step ahead of their pursuers. While there are many exciting moments, the story bogs down in several places while the mobsters speculate, rehashing information the reader already knows. Perry's writing style and vocabulary are easy and simplistic, and Jane sometimes seems too cool, and too smart, for her own good. The Mafia characters are numerous and interchangeable, and the story ends limply, with four unnecessary closing chapters. This is far from Perry's best, but it's still a quick, easy read with a few thrills. (Jan.) FYI: Perry won an Edgar for The Butcher's Boy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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