City of Lies [Import] [Paperback]

R. J. Ellory (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Group Ltd; Export Ed edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0752873679
• ISBN-13: 978-0752873671
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,043,835 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Roger Jon Ellory was born in Birmingham, England, June 20th 1965 at Sorento Hospital. The hospital has now been demolished. There is no direct evidence that the two events were linked.

His father having already left before Roger was born, he was then orphaned at the age of seven. His mother, Carole - an actress and dancer - died as a result of a pneumonia epidemic that claimed more than a dozen victims in the early 1970s. In 1973 Roger was swiftly despatched to a boarding school and stayed there until he was sixteen. Upon leaving school he returned to Birmingham to live with his maternal grandmother. His grandfather had already drowned off the Gower Peninsula in the south of Wales in 1957. In April of 1982 Roger's grandmother died following a number of heart attacks.

At seventeen years of age he was arrested for poaching. He was charged,tried, and sentenced to a jail term which he served without causing too much trouble. Upon his release he vanished quietly into relative obscurity to pursue interests in graphic design, photography and music. As a guitar player in a band called 'The Manta Rays' he was partly responsible for their reputation as the loudest band south of Manchester and north of London. Following the untimely death of their drummer, Roger quit the music scene and devoted himself to studying obscure philosophies and reading. Through the complete works of Conan Doyle, Michael Moorcock, JRR Tolkien, numerous books by Stephen King and many others, his interest in fiction steadily grew, not only from the viewpoint of a reader, but a burgeoning interest as a writer.

Roger began his first novel on November 4th, 1987 and did not stop, except for three days when he was going through a divorce from his first wife, until July of 1993. During this time he completed twenty-two novels, most of them in longhand, and accumulated several hundred polite and complimentary rejection letters from many different and varied publishers. The standard response from the UK publishing trade was that they could not consider the possibility of publishing books based in the United States written by an Englishman. He was advised to send his work to American publishers, which he duly did, and received from them equally polite and complimentary rejection letters that said it was not possible for American publishers to publish books set in the US written by an Englishman. Roger stopped writing out of sheer frustration and did not start again until August 2001. Between August 2001 and January 2002 he wrote three books, the second of which was called Candlemoth. This was purchased by Orion UK and published in 2003. How and why it was published is another story entirely, which if you ever go to one of Roger's events he will tell you! Candlemoth was translated into German, Dutch and Italian. The book also secured a nomination on the shortlist for the Crime Writers' Association Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2003.

Roger's second book, Ghostheart, was released in 2004 in the UK, and his third book, A Quiet Vendetta, was released in August 2005. In 2006 he published City of Lies, and once again secured a nomination for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of that year. City of Lies was also translated into Bulgarian and made available in Large Print. His fifth book - A Quiet Belief In Angels - was published in August 2007, and in the latter part of the year it was selected for the phenomenally successful British TV equivalent of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, the Richard and Judy Book Club. The book was purchased for translation into more than twenty languages including French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian, Norwegian and Lithuanian, released on both abridged and unabridged audio, and made available in Large Print. As of mid-2008, there were more than 300,000 copies of the book in circulation in the UK alone. It was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction Novel of 2008, the 813 Trophy, the Quebec Booksellers' Prize, the Europeen Du Point Award, and was the winner of the Inaugural Prix Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur in France. Roger has also been contracted to write the screenplay by Oscar-winning writer and director of 'Le Vie En Rose', Olivier Dahan.

In September of 2009 A Quiet Belief In Angels will be released by Overlook Press in the United States.

Currently there are a further three books due for release in the UK - the first in the fall of 2009 ('The Anniversary Man'), the second in 2010, and Roger is currently working on the third which will be released in 2011.

On numerous occasions people have tried to identify Roger's work with a particular genre - crime, thriller, historical fiction - but this categorisation has been a relatively fruitless endeavour. Roger's ethos is merely to work towards producing a good story, something that encapsulates elements of humanity and life without necessarily slotting into a predetermined pigeonhole. He attempts to produce an average of forty thousand words a month, and aims to get a first draft completed within three to four months. His wife thinks he is a workaholic, his son considers him slightly left-of-centre, but they put up with him regardless. His son has long since been aware of the fact that 'dad' buys stuff, and thus his idiosyncrasies should be tolerated.

Roger doesn't read anywhere enough books, doesn't watch enough movies, and keeps trying to remedy these omissions. To date he has routinely failed.

Recently he read a book called 'How Not To Write A Novel' by David Armstrong. His favourite quote from this book went along the lines of 'The harder you work the luckier you get'. He agrees with this principle, and thus has no intention of retiring from anything, ever.

He's just going to keep on writing, and he hopes people keep on reading, and now there are people showing up to readings and signings that he has never met before, he feels that his purpose as a writer is at last being accomplished.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 66 Carmine, August 15, 2008

By 

oej aboard (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Lies (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!, August 3, 2008

By 

Big Bertha (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Lies (Paperback)

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'

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New York Gangsters In A New Light, February 15, 2010

By 

Ken C. "Ken C." (So. Cal) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: City Of Lies (Hardcover)

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.