Customer Reviews

The Face of the Assassin

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

See storyline above. Preferrably the Booklist review.

As a somewhat avid thriller reader, there was something about this novel that didn't take with me. There was action and some suspense but it seemed to lack the gripping pace and 'pull you in' writing that I come to expect.
This is my first David Lindsey novel. I'm not sure if there will be another.

I have got to say that this is one taughtly written thriller that puts many authors writting in the same genre to shame. I have read Lindsey before and did not come away as impressed as I did with this novel. Perhaps because 'Face of the Assassin' was so gritty and brutal, it rang somewhat true. Whereas many of today's thrillers have an underlying need to wrap everything up neatly and with a pleasant ending and thus they feel like childrens comic books instead of an adult noir.

And though the very end of this novel is satisfying, their is a sort of post climax gun fight that was kind of silly. What really stuck out for me as I read this, was the excellent quality of the prose. The feel of being in a helter-skelter Mexico City vividly came through pretty well.

I would say that this is a book that will not only satisfy you, but remain with you. This is one of the better noir thrillers to come along in quite a while.

Adopted as an infant, Austin, Texas widower Paul Bern lives a contented quiet life earning a living as a highly regarded forensic resurrection expert, who recreates visages of severely damaged accident or criminal victims. Client 'Becca Haber arrives at his home bringing with her a skull she purchased from a street kid in Mexico City. She wants him to recreate the face. Paul is hardly into his effort when he already recognizes the countenance staring back at him as one he sees whenever he looks into a mirror.

Not long afterward, the call comes confirming what an unsettled Paul theorized: that the skull he holds is his twin. The caller Vincente Mondragon informs him that the sibling he never knew existed was recently murdered CIA field agent Jude Lerner. Vincente insists that Jude's operation affects national security so without the superstar the country is in trouble. The civilian Paul is expected to perform as Jude so that the scenario is completed in a favorable manner.

Though the twins never met theme feels ancient, David Lindsey keeps his thriller fresh due to a wonderful out of place hero who belongs more in an academic background than in the midst of a deadly operation. The action-packed story line is filled with plenty of twists that will keep the audience guessing as to what happens next to Paul and by whom. His teen neighbor is an interesting support character suffering from a cognitive-disconnect disorder caused by an accident, but she enables the reader to see deep into what kind of person Paul is. Twins aside, readers will enjoy this fine civilian in the cold thriller.

Harriet Klausner

I first read David Lindsey maybe 10 or fifteen years ago. His first book was out, and was recommended to me as unusual. I read it, and I agreed. Lindsey has, through the dozen or so books he's written, displayed a very weird ability to make relatively straightforward individuals come to life. He also has a marvelous sense of atmosphere, and a wonderful talent in concocting really creepy bad guys.

His last book, Animosity, was a mistake for him in my opinion. It was more of a Hitchcockian thriller than the mystery/suspense novel he's so well known for. The current installment is a return to what he does best: a melding of mystery, espionage, and suspense, with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure.

In the current book, Paul Bern is a forensic sculptor who reconstructs faces from skulls, and sometimes works with police to construct artist's conceptions of criminals or missing persons. He also does freelance work, and it's in that capacity that he's approached by a woman who hands him a skull and a strange story that she thinks this *might* be her husband, and she wants Bern to reconstruct the skull's face to discover if this is true. No sooner does the woman leave, and Bern begin to reconstruct the face that was attached to the skull, than he discovers something creepy: he's reconstructing his own face, exactly.

This leads him to other, more earth-shattering discoveries, and things get only stranger and more suspenseful as the book tools along. There are incidents in the story which, in retrospect, don't make any sense, but that's neither here nor there: they serve the purpose of making things more suspenseful and interesting. Bern quickly learns how to survive at what he's doing, and his journey through the underworld is interesting, to say the least. And the atmosphere of Mexico City (where most of the story takes place) is almost palpable, and feels very authentic.

I enjoyed this book, and would recommend it. It's not his best (I still vote for Mercy) but it is pretty good.

First I must confess, I am a huge fan of David Lindsey, I think he is one of the five best thriller writers working today. I am always trying to turn on people to his writing. Let me say I thought this was one of his best books, it has the classic Lindsey prose and the great locations maticulously researched. I found Paul Bern a facinating protagonist and the villian was vintage Lindsey. I always love when he sets his books in Mexico City, he really has a feel for the city, you can almost smell the decay. The story has a fast pace and I read it over a weekend, I just could not wait to see what happened to Paul Bern. The only qualm I have is that I wish Lindsey would set his books back in Houston, instead of Austin, I mean I love Austin, but Houston has a real soul that Austin will never have. If you enjoy reading fast paced, well written thillers, then you will love this book.

Summer's here. If you need a thriller to keep you entranced for a long weekend, "The Face of the Assassin" should be high on your list.

Paul Bern is a forensic artist: he recreates likenesses of the deceased, working from their skulls. A woman brings him a skull and as Bern works on building a face around it, he is troubled. A household accident brings him to see what is so troubling: the face he has reconstructed from the skull is - you guessed it - his own.

By twists and turns, Bern learns that he had a twin brother who met his end in an untimely and unseemly way. A mysterious agent offers Bern the opportunity to track down his brother's killers - or, should he refuse, face an unseemly end of his own life.

Oh yes, a terrorist or two has to be tracked down along the way.

This thriller moves quickly. Bern is believable as are the other major characters. Bern learns the ins-and-outs of spycraft perhaps a bit too easily, but after all, his twin brother was a spy, so perhaps it's genetic. In any event, the minor disconnects aren't enough to keep this from being a thoroughly enjoyable read with a reasonably solid surprise ending.

Jerry

I like my bad guys bad. Creepy and bad is even better. Forensic anthropologist /artist Paul Bern makes his living recreating the heads of crime victims, by building up layers of clay on their skulls. A women brings him a skull, says she bought it off the street in Mexico and asks him to recreate the features-- she thinks it may be her late husband's skull. He doesn't believe her, but completes the work, even after she disappears, only to find that looking at the completed head is like looking in the mirror... The plot twists and turns from there, as Bern meets one of the creepiest characters I've seen since Hannibal Lechter. I really liked this book!