At Hell's Gate : A Novel (Black, Ethan) [Hardcover]

Ethan Black (Author)

Book Description

Series: Black, Ethan | Publication Date: July 27, 2004

A day of kayaking on the East River turns tragic when Conrad Voort and his fiancée, Camilla, find a corpse floating in the water at Hell's Gate, a ship graveyard dating back to colonial times. The discovery seems at first tied to the accident-strewn history of the treacherous passage, but Voort begins to suspect a more modern and global enemy is emerging and when he begins to ask questions he himself is targeted. A man with the power to destroy all that Voort holds dear stages an unimaginable attack that leaves the detective broken and on the run. Defying the laws of his extended cop family and of his brother officers, he returns to exact revenge -- alone.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Suspense novelist Ethan Black has made a regular business of getting inside the heads of his heroes and villains in order to make clear that they are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, neither all strength nor all weakness. His taste for psychological nuance has inspired critical plaudits, and was keenly on view in 2003's Dead for Life, which featured an ostensibly textbook-caliber sociopath who is eventually shown to be no less complex or deserving of sympathy than anyone else, including Black's protagonist, multimillionaire New York police detective Conrad Voort. Sadly, At Hell's Gate, the fifth entry in the Voort series, pales by comparison with that previous work. In his effort to explore the depths of Voort's fears, Black has produced a tale that sacrifices emotional intrigue to vengeful violence.

Things begin promisingly enough. Voort, the Jaguar-driving scion of one of New York's founding families, is kayaking with his impossibly beautiful, on-and-off girlfriend, Camilla Ryan, in a treacherous stretch of the East River called Hell's Gate, when they encounter the corpse of a murdered taxi driver. Turns out the cabby was fascinated with old shipwrecks, including a riches-laden 18th-century frigate that might be sunk near Hell's Gate. But Voort's homicide probe leads him well beyond treasure hunting, to arson and death aboard a tugboat--and eventually into the clutches of a remorseless mercenary named Leon Bok, who threatens the cop with sexual debasement and the slaying of his family, unless Voort leaves town for a couple of weeks. Traumatized, increasingly paranoid of further attack, and fearing that he's "no good as a man anymore," Voort flees to Argentina with Camilla. But he soon returns and, under an alias, too boldly resumes his inquiry, which leads to revelations of international money laundering, divisiveness within Voort's usually close-knit clan, and a climactic shootout that begs for cinematic adaptation. Black--the pseudonym used by a New York journalist--would have done better completing his portrait of a golden-boy treading the precipice of collapse, and left all the fireworks to lesser novelists. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly

Conrad Voort, the richest and best-looking detective in the NYPD, is back in the fifth entry of what is becoming one of the genre's most interesting and exciting series (Dead For Life; Irresistible; etc.). Voort and fabulous fiancée Camilla are kayaking the treacherous waters of Hell's Gate, a rough spot on the East River, when they come across a dead body in the swirling water. Voort's subsequent investigation of the floater leads him to Ted Stone, a wealthy, corrupt lawyer working at the highest levels of the United Nations. Ted's in trouble—the body's only part of it—and he's hired deadly mercenary Leon Bok to make all his problems go away. Bok, a workman worthy of his hire, quickly captures Voort, breaks him psychologically and convinces him that he should take a vacation while Ted and Bok finish up important business. Voort comes to his senses and returns early from his enforced vacation to confront both his mental and physical demons in a cataclysmic confrontation with Bok and his team of hired killers. In a world of fictional cookie-cutter cops, Voort's a true original; scenes from his childhood help explain his sometimes almost supernatural abilities as a cop and his utmost devotion to the Voort clan. It all adds up to a riveting read, sure to please Black's growing ranks of satisfied fans.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743243986
• ISBN-13: 978-0743243988
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,496,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High Caliber Page-Turner, August 6, 2005

By 

N. Bilmes "bookaholic" (Vernon, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Hell's Gate : A Novel (Black, Ethan) (Hardcover)

Wow! Ethan Black's newest Voort thriller moves along at a breakneck pace, putting our hero through one of the most harrowing experiences in literature, an experience more discomfiting than the dental torture scenes in Marathon Man, and equally as hard to read as the torture scenes in Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs.

Conrad Voort is broken down by the experience and must decide to succumb to the terror, or fight back. The final 150 pages of this book are taut with suspense and action, and the interfamilial tension between Voorts, Voort and his partner, and Voort and Camilla add an emotional element that makes the suspense more real.

This was an excellent book, and I highly recommend it.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DOWN A NOTCH, September 16, 2004

By 

Michael Butts (Berkeley Springs, WV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Hell's Gate : A Novel (Black, Ethan) (Hardcover)

Ethan Black's previous Conrad Voort novels have been expertly written and near perfect. In AT HELL'S GATE, Black loses some of the impetus he established in his earlier works. Conrad is back, engaged to Camilla Ryan, and finds himself in a murder investigation that has far reaching implications.
He and Camilla discover a corpse while kayaking, and later find that the victim is a cab driver. This leads to the cabbie's interest in treasure hunting, looking for a sunken treasure believed to be in the river. Once Voort latches on to the probable bad guy, he is victimized by a sadistic henchman---his masculinity takes a big bruise, and his damaged psyche forces him into the role of a vigilante, without including his beloved in what's going on.
Black writes good dialogue, and he sets some tense scenarios, but Voort loses some of his charm in this one. In his other novels, Voort has been very moralistic, and a deep believer in his faith and his family. His actions in this one don't seem to coincide with what we've learned about him up to this point.
I hope Black does better in his next Voort offering and lets Camilla and Voort go ahead and tie the knot, or separate them permanently.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars 4 1/2 stars, September 30, 2004

By 

Konrad Kern (OFallon, MO United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: At Hell's Gate : A Novel (Black, Ethan) (Hardcover)

See story summary above.

An average effort by Ethan Black this time around. Though it has action as well as an emotional edge, this isn't the Conrad Voort of old (as one reviewer mentioned). It is a good story and it will keep you intrigued, so I would still recommend it for Ethan Black fans.