Customer Reviews

The Dangerous Edge (Coronet Books)

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Simply an amazing thriller. Daley, author of Prince of the City, the New York City police corruption classic takes you to a completely different time and place -- France after WWII, and makes you feel he's a native of the place. (Perhaps he is; if not, he is a masterful writer.) The story is reminicent of those elegant old "caper" movies on the Riviera -- not in the silly or frothy sense. It features a master criminal who commits a brilliant heist with a team of whom you root for and can't help admiring, despite his glaring flaws and mistakes. And a dogged French inspector, whom you also root for. The setting of post-WWII France features all manner of realistic details about the time and place, from the simmering resentment of the American rescuers of Europe to what became of all the fast, surplus PT boats after the war. This is one of those books that will make you want to run out and read everything you can find by the same author -- indeed, searching for new titles by Daley is how I ended up on this page.

Many years ago, I read Year of the Dragon. A story that was very factual about the times of the 70's in NYC C-Town. So I was just browsing in the lib and saw this book thinking it was going to be a cop story.
Well, it was and it isn't. Story is set after WWII, and if factual, you get a good sense of France and Europe in general after getting the stuffings kicked out of them. You learn if you live thru some things, or you can live and learn thru reading. Having lived thru the 70's in C-Town, in which I can relate. I can relate to this time period, even tho it was back in the day...before my time. It's that good. Okay, in the beginning, the set up just had to take a little while to go thru all the players. But most good books have a few set up pages.