The Face of the Assassin [Hardcover]

David L. Lindsey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2004 | Series: Lindsey, David

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Silence and Mercy comes another relentless thriller that will keep readers up all night.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forensic artist Paul Bern uses his impressive talents as a sculptor to reconstruct a face on an anonymous skull brought to him under mysterious circumstances in Lindsey's latest in a long line of expertly constructed thrillers (The Rules of Silence, etc.). The more Paul works on the skull, the more he's convinced that there's something distinctly disturbing about the emerging features. Soon after he figures it out (long after the reader has done so), he finds himself caught up in a murky world of spies, smugglers and international terrorism. Forced to abandon his idyllic central Texas home, he travels to Mexico City, where he must impersonate his own, recently murdered, CIA agent twin brother. Heavy Rain is the code name of the mission; the purpose is to capture or kill the world's most feared terrorist, Ghazi Baida. There's a beautiful agent, Susana Mejía, and the usual collection of Mexican hoods, but the real showstopper is Vicente Mondragón, a man whose entire face has been removed in a drug vendetta, leaving him with nothing more than exposed muscle, bone, gristle, protruding lips and a naked pair of googly eyes. This horror is kept antiseptic by a thin transparent membrane that Vicente must spritz at regular intervals. The novel's suspense lies in Paul's ongoing efforts to maintain his identity as his own brother and at the same time attempt to uncover Baida's terror plan. The plot is deftly handled, the characters are sharp and memorable, there's a shocker twist at the end and the background information on faces, or the lack thereof, is fascinating.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Paul Bern, a forensic artist, has a fascinating job: re-creating the facial features of homicide or accident victims. But his job gets even more fascinating when a woman shows up at his door with a skull in a bag. She believes it's the remains of her husband, and she wants Paul to confirm her suspicion. Paul soon learns some things about himself that shock him, and in no time he's railroaded by the U.S. government into helping them ferret out a group of terrorists in South America. This is a troublesome novel from a brand-name thriller author. Its plot is needlessly far-fetched (you can feel Lindsey struggling to justify putting his fish-out-of-water protagonist into the places the plot requires him to be). Its characters are thin, and Alice, the 17-year-old girl whose "cognitive disconnect" allows her to sense when someone is lying, belongs in a different novel altogether (perhaps something by Dean Koontz, who knows what to do with this kind of character). The prose is workmanlike, for the most part, although the final chapter contains some of the worst writing of the year. Although Lindsey has a large fan base, and he has written some good novels, this is not one of them. It will sell, but finishing it--even for his keenest fans--will be an act of sheer willpower. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Warner Books; 1st edition (April 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044652929X
• ISBN-13: 978-0446529297
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,774,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Lindsey has published 14 novels in the mystery, thriller, suspense, and spy genres. He began his writing career in 1983 by publishing two mystery novels in the same year. One of those novels, "A Cold Mind" featuring Houston homicide detective, Stuart Haydon, has been called by reviewers "one of the best suspense novels of all time"; and "a classic of the genre." Lindsey began working closely with the Houston Homicide Division for his research, and by the late 1980s Lindsey had written four Haydon novels.

In 1988 he changed directions and began extensive research for a novel that would become one of the first to be published about a then new criminal phenomenon, the serial killer. Published in 1990, "Mercy" became an international bestseller. In 1992 the German television network Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), featured Lindsey in an hour-long special program in their "Literature and Culture" series. "Mercy" was optioned for a feature film production, and remained under option for over a decade before it was finally filmed and premiered on HBO in April 2000.

In 1992 "Body of Truth", the fifth and last novel to feature Stuart Haydon, was published and won Germany's Bochumer Krimi Archiv award for the best suspense novel of the year. Lindsey turned to international settings with "Requiem for a Glass Heart" (1996) and "The Color of Night" (1999). The first novel dealt with international crime, while the second was set in the world of spies and international intelligence. "The Rules of Silence", Lindsey's twelfth novel was published in 2003, and was the first to be set in his home city, Austin. It was immediately bought outright by Universal Studios for a feature film production.

After publishing his thirteenth novel, Lindsey spent the next several years pursuing two large teleplay projects before his curiosity brought him back to novels in 2007. He began researching the astonishing rise of the government's outsourcing of national intelligence. Silently, and out of sight, privatized spying had become a multi-billion dollar industry in the years following 9/11. The industry's growth has been so explosive that private contractors now command over 70% of the nation's entire intelligence budget. Some of the corporations have become information industry giants with government contracts in the billions of dollars annually.

Lindsey thought this subject was tailor-made for long form fiction, but he soon realized that the story he wanted to tell was too large to be encompassed in a single volume. In 2011 Lindsey, writing under the pseudonym Paul Harper, published "Pacific Heights", the first volume in a serial novel featuring former intelligence officer Marten Fane. "Sorrow's Spy", the second volume in the Marten Fane Story serial novel will be published in 2012.

Lindsey researches and writes his novels in his library, which is adjacent to his home in Austin, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Lindsey, October 9, 2006

By 

Shannon Deason (Houston) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Face of the Assassin (Mass Market Paperback)

Really a great read, from an writer that is consistantly first rate. The Mexico City setting for part of the book is fantastic, you can feel the city close in. Lindsey really gets Mexico City and through his writing skills and gift for great imagery, the city comes alive. The story is fast paced and riviting, I hate it when people tell the whole story in their review, so ill just say, if you like taunt well written thrillers set in exotic locals, then you will love this book. Buy it!..Highly Recommended....frankly read all of his books, they are all, great reads.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Thoughtful and Deeply Written Protagonist, January 4, 2005

By 

FictionAddiction.NET - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Face of the Assassin (Hardcover)

Forensic artist Paul Bern has the ability to take a skull and, with the right materials, recreate the face that once graced it. He spends much of his day sketching pictures for the police, often keeping Alice, his goddaughter who was brain damaged in the same boating accident that took his wife, company.

The two have a sort of peace between them, his drawing calms her, and he enjoys her company, even though she doesn't seem to be able to understand a word he says. Her own conversation seems perfectly normal, save for the fact that the way she puts the words together make no sense.

A woman brings a skull to him, claiming that she bought it off a street kid in Mexico. She needs to know if it is, as told, the skull of her lost husband. Alice doesn't believe her...something about her facial expressions makes the young women believe their visitor is lying, but Paul doesn't mind, knowing that though Alice is accurate, she could be picking up on anything. But soon his client will disappear, and the face that the skull reveals is uncannily like his own.

When he meets Mondragon, the man blackmails him into helping the CIA. They want him to take the place of the man the skull once belonged to. Paul learns that he had a twin brother, Jude Lerner, and that Jude had managed to infiltrate a terrorist network. No one knows Jude's dead, and it's up to Paul to learn how to be his brother...everything he was, Paul needs to become, in order to destroy the network.

One of the most interesting things about this story is how Paul learns about his brother...and, oddly enough, about himself. Jude, according to his ex-partner Susana, was not the most likable of men. This is a unique way of telling the story, having the protagonist step into someone else's shoes, someone with uncanny similarities (for instance, they have a lot of the same ways of sitting, same expressions, which is interesting since they never met each other) and tragic differences. Things he never thought himself capable of, he finds himself doing, all because Jude did.

The main idea of the story...that a terrorist leader is looking to defect and that Jude/Paul is the only one he trusts enough to help him is also well done, and lends itself to many page turning moments, especially since you know that it's not going to as simple as all that, not in the least.

The run down is that Lindsey once again takes an extremely interesting situation and creates a tense, intelligent, action packed read. Paul Bern is a thoughtful and very deeply written protagonist.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read, June 21, 2004

By 

"schylar7" (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Face of the Assassin (Hardcover)

I have been a fan of David Lindsey since I was at university. I have read all of his books and this is one of his best. The story never flags and the pace is an adrinaline rush. Other reviewers have summerized the story, a bit exhaustably I might add, but I'll just say that if you like your thriller taunt, well written, and billiantly paced you will love this book.