The Birthday Girl [Import] [Paperback]

Stephen Leather (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 552 pages
• Publisher: ISIS Publishing (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0753174987
• ISBN-13: 978-0753174982
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Stephen Leather was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992. His bestsellers have been translated into more than ten languages. He has also written for television shows such as London's Burning, The Knock and the BBC's Murder in Mind series. You can find out more from his website, www.stephenleather.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not your standard issue Daddy's Little Girl, April 20, 2006

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Birthday Girl (Paperback)

Fathers historically worry that their daughters will be sexually and emotionally misused by boys when they start to date. I don't think Tony Freeman of THE BIRTHDAY GIRL need worry about his Daddy's Little Girl, but, rather, should fear mightily for the boys.

Freeman is CEO of CRW Electronics, a defense contractor that manufacturers mine clearance systems. On a clandestine mission to fragmented Yugoslavia to sell the devices to the Christian Serbs, Tony is taken hostage by Bosnian Muslims. One of his captors is twelve year-old Mersiha, who, at this early age, has learned how to hate and mercilessly kill. But, Freeman also perceives her as a vulnerable young girl, and, when he's ultimately rescued, shields Mersiha with his own body and takes in the leg the bullets meant for her. Subsequently, he springs Mersiha from a Serbian-run concentration camp and takes her back to America where he and his wife Katherine adopt her as their own daughter.

Flash forward three years.

Mersiha is now, to all appearances, a well-adjusted, happy teenager on the verge of her sixteenth birthday. She's seeing a mental therapist for nightmares stemming from her and her family's brutal treatment by the Serbs, but, hey, getting therapy is as American as apple pie. She's step-Daddy's Little Girl. So, when she discovers that Katherine is committing adultery and CRW's existence is threatened by expatriate Russian mobsters, Mersiha decides to give her Old Man a helping hand without his knowledge, but with the aid of the Heckler & Koch handgun, a familiar weapon from the bad old days in the Old Country, that Tony keeps locked in the gun cabinet.

THE BIRTHDAY GIRL is an engaging read that I finished in three days despite the annoying intrusions of a career and home chores. What prevents me from awarding five stars was its complete lack of subtlety, something I value more highly now than I did when I cracked my first book five decades ago. When the ending involved a pursuit from Baltimore to the Colorado Rockies, and, specifically, the final chase of a hot air balloon by Bad Guys on snow mobiles, it began to read like a James Bond thriller. And I wish that author Stephen Leather could have somehow kept his heroine's atypical propensities hidden to the reader behind her normal, adolescent facade to the very end, thus providing a jaw-dropping plot twist to an otherwise clever premise. These quibbles aside, THE BIRTHDAY GIRL is one of Leather's better offerings.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "It's OK, pumpkin. The bullets will just punch holes in this hot air balloon and pass on through. We're safe up here, pumpkin.", August 28, 2008

By 

H. S. Wedekind "Mr. Weekend" (Pennsylvania, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Birthday Girl (Paperback)

Everything you really want to know about THE BIRTHDAY GIRL's plot has been nicely written by Mr. Haschka. I agree with him that this was a suspenseful thriller and there were a few unexpected twists and turns that will keep the reader hooked. The reason I had to give this novel by Stephen Leather 4 stars instead of 5 was the fact that he used too many British-isms, (e.g., boot = car trunk, rubbish bin = trash can, knickers = panties, etc.) which were distracting. I mean, the story takes place in Baltimore, MD and Estes Park, CO. The father, Tony, is originally from Scotland, but he is married to an American woman and has lived and worked in the US long enough have learned to speak our form of English. Besides, he isn't the one saying these things...the author is. Granted, the book was published in the UK but I still think Mr. Leather should have used terms we use here. He did, after all, work in Baltimore for a few years himself and is familiar with the lingo. O...and the fact that Tony calls his step-daughter, the sweet and deadly Mersiha, "pumpkin" just about every time he talks to her...even when being chased by bad guys trying to shoot holes thru the two of them...also was distracting. Nitpicking aside, I enjoyed THE BIRTHDAY GIRL and highly recommend it. I don't think Stephen Leather is capable of writing a bad novel..but that's my opinion.