Customer Reviews

City of Lies

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Before finishing Ellory's beautiful A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS I decided to buy everything else he has written, and CITY OF LIES is the first I found, although it is actually his fourth novel. I much prefer the author's original title '66 Carmine' as it evokes thoughts of a more appropriately noir-ish atmosphere than the rather bland title the publishers preferred and more accurately reflects one of the key elements of the story, which is to say this house is where it all began some three decades earlier and where it ultimately ends.

It has to be said that the writing style is so completely different from AQBIA that the reader might wonder if they were both penned by the same man, but there is one thread that both novels have in common: the central character in each case will become a writer, in fact the key man here has already had a book published in years past which is often referred to in dialogue. That man is 36-year-old John Harper, who has lived an unassuming life in Miami unaware that the father he thought had died when he was a boy is in reality one of the most powerful financiers of organised crime in New York. It's only when the elderly boss-of-bosses is shot and critically injured that Harper is brought in to act on behalf of the father he never knew so as to bring about the big deal that is designed to hand over power and territory to another leading underworld kingpin.

This is a riveting, powerful character-driven tale of life-long deception and power pursuits. Spread over just ten days or so the bulk of the story is built upon the lead up to a climax on a specific date, Christmas Eve, and much of the final 100 pages are dedicated to a minute-by-minute account of several simultaneous bank heists on that day. If this was to be turned into a film, I would suggest that Michael Mann would be the right man to direct it. Despite intense and intimate debate about what went on all those years ago and what will happen when everything comes to a head in a few days' time, I could not think what the outcome would be as it seemed, in its specific detail, to be utterly unpredictable. The confusion and distraction that Harper and others suffer is felt by the reader too, I for one feeling totally engrossed in the people, the history and the events, and sensing real tension and danger in the concluding stages. This is a crime thriller with genuine depth and breadth and one that on several occasions manages to move, excite and surprise the reader. The bank heists are pure theatre, vividly cinematic and thoroughly gripping. Once you're in, you won't want to put it down until the very end. Strongly recommended - RJ Ellory has to be one of Britain's best and yet still most promising literary talents.

From the moment John Harper got the phone call summoning him back to New York and found out that his father, who he'd thought dead for the past 30 years was seriously ill in hospital following a shooting in a liquor store I was hooked.

As the storyline develops John uncovers a massive web of lies and deceit starting with the Aunt who brought him up and told him his father was dead, Uncle Walt his fathers business partner in the criminal underworld, the 'eye candy' Cathy Hollander. Which one should he believe? Where does the seemingly obsessed Detective Frank Duchaunak fit in to it all?

I enjoyed this one so much I didn't want to finish it.

Anyone who's considering an RJ Ellory book and not sure which one, they're all great, but I'd recommend this one or 'A Quiet Vendetta'

From Candlemoth, R. J. Ellory's first novel, I have now read all but two. City of Lies is not my favorite, but that's only because he has two better books out- A Quiet Belief in Angels, and A Simple Act of Violence. Anyone picking up City of Lies as a stand-alone read will be mesmerized by the quality of Ellory's writing, his descriptiveness, his ability to place the reader into the action, and into the minds of his characters. And the characters themselves are deep and intriguing, masterfully drawn. How a British writer can make the reader believe that he knows the American scenes of his novels so well that you might believe that he has lived in that location his entire live escapes me. All the nuances of the locale are correct. Then, of course, there is the story itself. Ellory is a master story teller, one up there with Dennis Lehane and William Lee Burke. You will hold all of your crime novelists to higher standards after you finish a book by R.J. Ellory. City of Lies brings you a look at New York and its crime that matches or exceeds any that I have ever read.

The first thing I have to say about this book is that once you pick it up you won't put it down. This is the fourth book I have read by Mr. Ellory and I have loved each of them. No two are the same with the exception of the heart of each book: the main character.

In this novel that person is John Harper, a 36-year-old author who is writing human interest stories in local papers in Miami. He gets a phone call a few days before Christmas and finds himself back home in NYC in the middle of a violent mystery. His family past comes back to haunt him and he finds the life he thought he had lived was actually a lie.

Quickly Harper- and the reader- are swept into a story of old-time gangsters and territorial wars and violent hits and robberies. In some ways it is almost like going through a time machine, while still keeping one foot in 2004 New York.

Harper is surrounded by characters: the Aunt who raised him with secrets; the father he believed dead; the "Uncle" who watched over him; the mysterious beauty who touches his heart but keeps her distance; and the obsessive detective, who has just as many questions as answers.

And through the dark, snow-covered streets of New York, Harper is pushed and pulled into a world of violence and death and mysterious questions that he must find the answers to in order to save his life and his sanity.

Mr. Ellory has a way of creating a central character that connects instantly with the reader and his surrounding cast unveils bit by bit more layers of depth in that character that paints him different shades throughout the story.

Each character- no matter how minor- plays his part and all strings are tied up by the end of the story.

When you come to the last page of this story you have gone through a journey with John Harper and seen how life- past and present- imprints a mark on the character's soul and leaves a definite memory in the mind of the reader.

I tried to make this book last longer but I couldn't stop reading it. I have become addicted to Mr. Ellory's writing. It is an addiction I highly recommend.

after reading "a quiet belief in angels" i had to read every book written by rj ellory! this storyline is so captivating and the characters rich and complex. no one is better at building suspense and fascinating endings !

To me, this book was unreadable, quite literally unreadable. I believe there is a plot here that someone with more patience for pretentious writing than I possess would find compelling. But the endless moody, quasi-poetic-lyrical descriptions, couched in stacks of run-on sentences fragments was just too much for me. I found myself scanning paragraph after paragraph looking for the story line through a blur of drizzly wordiness. After some 40-50 pages of it, I simply put it down and never returned. This despite the fact that the plot had become intriguing, and I had developed a genuine interest in how the author would resolve his protagonist's predicament and fate.

This is a genre that rewards clean, crisp declarative sentences and realistic dialog. Neither is here at all. It's as though the author is a frustrated lyrical poet -- a quite bad one, I must add, so justifiably frustrated -- who can create a good story but can't bring himself to just tell it without tarting it up.

Some may enjoy this sort of pap, but if I'm going to read lyrical fiction there is so much truly good stuff out there that I can't waste my time with this stuff. Or, if I'm going to read a plot-driven, genre thriller I want it to be just that: a thriller, the sort that keeps me moving through the character's and plot's development without getting in the way.

One star may be harsh, but what can I say? I couldn't get even a third of the way through the thing without gagging.