Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
May 2000, 384 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2001, 384 pages
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 ...
If you liked Demolition Angel, try these:
by Stella Rimington
Published 2006
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.
by James Patterson, Andrew Gross
Published 2003
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.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
