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An Otto Penzler Book
by Thomas Perry
In Thomas Perry's Edgar-winning debut The Butcher's Boy, a professional killer betrayed by the Mafia leaves countless mobsters dead and then disappears. Justice Department official Elizabeth Waring is the only one who believes he ever existed. Many years later, the Butcher's Boy finds his peaceful life threatened when a Mafia hit team finally catches up with him. He knows they won't stop coming and decides to take the fight to their door.
Soon Waring, now high up in the Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department, receives a surprise late-night visit from the Butcher's Boy. Knowing she keeps track of the Mafia, he asks her whom his attackers worked for, offering information that will help her crack an unsolved murder in return. So begins a new assault on organized crime and an uneasy alliance between opposite sides of the law. As the Butcher's Boy works his way ever closer to his quarry in an effort to protect his new way of life, Waring is in a race against time, either to convince him to become a protected informant - or to take him out of commission for good.
"Starred Review. Perry offers a compelling, rapid-fire plot, credible Mafia and FBI secondary characters, an indictment of self-serving officialdom, and the old soul-shattering moral dilemma: what is truth?" - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Perry is a consummate craftsman. No one makes killing bad guys more fun, no one is smarter at blending research and invention, and no one offers a higher body count of ingenious hits. Highly recommended for fans of crime fiction." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Beneath the sky-high body count, the twisty plot is powered by Perry's relentless focus on the question of where the next threat is coming from and how to survive it." - Kirkus Reviews
This information about The Informant was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jo Perry
Thomas Perry is the bestselling author of over twenty-seven novels, including the critically acclaimed Jane Whitefield series, Forty Thieves, and The Butcher's Boy, which won the Edgar Award. He lives in Southern California.
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