BookBrowse has a new look! Learn more about the update here.

Reviews of Demolition Angel by Robert Crais

Demolition Angel by Robert Crais

Demolition Angel

by Robert Crais
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • May 1, 2000
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2001
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call turns into a devastating murder scene, Carol embarks on an investigation that reveals intentions far more disturbing than one-shot acts of anarchy.

With the most unforgettable female lead character since Clarice Starling, Demolition Angel is a blistering stand-alone thriller from the freshest bestselling voice in crime fiction.

Carol Starkey is struggling to pick up the pieces of her former life as L.A.'s finest bomb squad technician. Fueled with liberal doses of alcohol and Tagamet, she's doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Section. Three years have passed since the event that haunts her--a detonation that killed her partner and lover, David "Sugar" Boudreaux. Fragments from the same explosion sliced through Starkey's protective Kevlar, scarred her beyond repair, and left her outside looking in at the life she left behind. Now she can't bear her reflection in the mirror, and hasn't been with another man since Sugar left her bed the morning they rolled out to the bomb site.

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call turns into a devastating murder scene, Carol catches the case and embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal intentions far more disturbing than one-shot acts of anarchy. The bombs are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians, and as the one tech who survived the deadliest of blasts, Carol is in for the most intense fight of her life.

Against the dazzling and lonely backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles, Robert Crais has crafted a work of ingenious depth of character, matched with a transcendent narrative velocity. Demolition Angel is sure to take its place among the finest thrillers of the modern age.



"Tell me about the thumb. I know what you told me on the phone, but tell me everything now." Starkey inhaled half an inch of cigarette, then flicked ash on the floor, not bothering with the ashtray. She did that every time she was annoyed with being here, which was always.

"Please use the ashtray, Carol."

"I missed."

"You didn't miss."

Detective-2 Carol Starkey took another deep pull on the cigarette, then crushed it out. When she first started seeing this therapist, Dana Williams wouldn't let her smoke during session. That was three years and four therapists ago. In the time Starkey was working her way through the second and third therapists, Dana had gone back to the smokes herself, and now didn't mind. Sometimes they both smoked and the goddamned room clouded up like the Imperial Valley capped by an inversion layer. Starkey shrugged.

"No, I guess I didn't miss. I'm just pissed off, is all. It's been three years, and here I am back where I ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

USA Today - Carol Memmott
Demolition Angel's contemporary edginess is crafted around Crais' exploration of Internet bomb sites. He builds as story that's fascinating and frighteningly believable.

Library Journal
Fast paced, authentic, well written, and combining suspense and police procedural, this tale features a tough heroine who should win a whole new audience for Crais.

Publisher's Weekly
Crais deserves further garlands for this stand-alone crime novel.

Reader Reviews

Anonymous

I loved this book! The book tells a lot about the bomb squad in LA: how bombs are defused, how they're made (though the author changed some details...Thank God! So no one could make a bomb from just reading the book). It also explore the politics ...   Read More
hassan hosseinpour

I found this book very intersesting. It is an obcessive read. I strongly recommend it.
Rich

I have never been much of a reader but I got this book as a gift and one night being bored, picked it up and started reading it. Well, I read it during breaks, at red lights, while I was cooking... you get the idea. Yes, just as with any story there ...   Read More
Yeshar Hosseinpour

This book is very boring at the beginning but it becomes interesting in the end

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Demolition Angel, try these:

  • At Risk jacket

    At Risk

    by Stella Rimington

    Published 2006

    About this book

    More by this author

    Drawing from her experience as the first woman director general of MI5, Stella Rimington gives us a story that is smart, tautly drawn, and suspenseful from first to last.

  • 2nd Chance jacket

    2nd Chance

    by James Patterson, Andrew Gross

    Published 2003

    About this book

    More by this author

    The partners in the Women's Murder Club realize that this killer is after something unspeakable and that the next target could be one of them - so they bait a trap that can't be resisted; but if their calculation is wrong, the consequences will be lethal.

We have 4 read-alikes for Demolition Angel, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Robert Crais
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Become a Member

Join BookBrowse today to start
discovering exceptional books!
Find Out More

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Briar Club
    The Briar Club
    by Kate Quinn
    Kate Quinn's novel The Briar Club opens with a murder on Thanksgiving Day, 1954. Police are on the ...
  • Book Jacket: Bury Your Gays
    Bury Your Gays
    by Chuck Tingle
    Chuck Tingle, for those who don't know, is the pseudonym of an eccentric writer best known for his ...
  • Book Jacket: Blue Ruin
    Blue Ruin
    by Hari Kunzru
    Like Red Pill and White Tears, the first two novels in Hari Kunzru's loosely connected Three-...
  • Book Jacket: A Gentleman and a Thief
    A Gentleman and a Thief
    by Dean Jobb
    In the Roaring Twenties—an era known for its flash and glamour as well as its gangsters and ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The 1619 Project
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
An impactful expansion of groundbreaking journalism, The 1619 Project offers a revealing vision of America's past and present.
Book Jacket
Lady Tan's Circle of Women
by Lisa See
Lisa See's latest historical novel, inspired by the true story of a woman physician from 15th-century China.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl
    by Bart Yates

    A saga spanning 12 significant days across nearly 100 years in the life of a single man.

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

L T C O of the B

and be entered to win..

Win This Book
Win Smothermoss

Smothermoss by Alisa Alering

A haunting, imaginative, and twisting tale of two sisters and the menacing, unexplained forces that threaten them and their rural mountain community.

Enter