Exit Wounds [Paperback]

Shaun Hutson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 10, 2001

When small-time criminals tangle with big-time gangsters and territory-hungry Yardies, the city streets run with blood - in the best tradition of a master of urban suspense. It begins with a murderous chase through the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. When a local hard man escapes, the action moves to an unsuspecting Britain where Yardie drug dealers and criminals begin to die horribly. Meanwhile a small-time crook, Frank Newton, has gathered his posse to pull off the robbery that will finally give them financial independence - unaware that half the haul belongs to a London gang boss who knows who they are. In return for their lives they have to eliminate a merciless new Yardie chief, while they themselves are being shadowed by a tenacious police team. With millions of pounds now at stake, the risks are escalating, violence is soaring - and all is on course for a massive bloodbath

Editorial Reviews

Review

Armed robber Frank Newton is looking for one last big haul to set up his retirement. When Frank discovers that he's just turned over crime boss Billy Parker, his retirement cruise looks set to be a quick sea trip attached to a concrete boot. But then Parker makes him an offer he literally cannot refuse. All Frank and his gang of ageing mobsters have to do is take down 'Papa' Ernie Codling, a vicious Yardie gangleader who is challenging Parker's rule. Caught between the two most violent gangs on the manor and with a vengeful police officer on his trail, Frank has to try and buck impossible odds just to stay alive.Hutson, the bad boy of British thriller writers, serves up his twenty-first novel - and a lacklustre affair it is. Perhaps, like his protagonists, Huston is suffering a mid-life crisis because this offering displays none of the verve, energy or downright twisted imaginings of his earlier works such as Assassin or Spawn. Never the most subtle of writers, Huston's saving grace has always been his over the top enthusiasm for his work, but here he uses cliches like blunt instruments in an attempt to stun the reader into acceptance of a strictly 'by the numbers' gangland caper novel. The cast is too large and too bland to make any striking impression; maudlin sentimentality replaces motivation and mindless violence, culminating in the predictable but pointless bloodbath finale, is used to pad out a plot that is wafer thin. Any time a deeper, more meaningful issue is touched upon, such as Frank and his wife's desperate need to have a child, it is swept aside in favour of excessive and guilt-free bloodletting. If you are not already a Hutson fan, this will not convert you. However, if all you want is lots of bad language and masses of gratuitous and lovingly-detailed violence, this is the book for you. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

The bestselling author of twenty previous novels, including most recently WARHOL'S PROPHECY, Shaun Hutson is recognised as a master of dark urban suspense. He lives with his family in Buckinghamshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan (August 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330370049
• ISBN-13: 978-0330370042
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,571,920 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Another winner, August 14, 2002

By 

BD Ashley "vidiot_y2k" (Otago, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Exit Wounds (Hardcover)

If this book is ever made into a movie Guy Ritchie should be first choice to direct it. Hutson delivers another compulsive story in this tale of a band of small time crooks out to pull one last job, the biggest of their lives. The only problem is the money they have stolen belongs to a powerful crime kingpin who gives them an ultimatum. Either he kills them on the spot or they can take a chance at having their lives spared and kill a psychotic Jamaican kingpin who is gruesomely butchering other criminals in order to become No. 1.
Being a Hutson novel there is ample graphic violence and the usual cliches he uses because Hutson himself admits he's too lazy to think of anything else. That's not a bad thing, though his previous book WARHOL'S PROPHECY was a lot better. I hope he returns to the horror genre again, if only once more. But this is good.