6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellently constructed plot!, September 4, 2007
Anyone who has read my review of Hurley's "Blood and Honey" will know that I rate him highly as an emerging talent. Perhaps with this book, the seventh in the series, there is an indication that he has 'arrived'.
It would be invidious to give away too much about the plot, save to say that's constructed around two main incidents, with a host of cunning and devious sub plots, that in no way detract from the path to the denouement.
Another major strength of his writing is his range of characters, some good, some bad, some nondescript, but all recognisable as being part of a wide and developing tapestry of personalities that inhabit this excellent series.He places them all within a City that both embraces and constricts them, and within a police force that is full of human beings with foibles, quirks,affection, personality disorders and naked ambition.
The book is also mercifully bereft of his son, JJ, who texts his father from around the world. However there is a still growing bond between Faraday, the central character and DC Paul Winter (who is trying to recover from an almighty dressing down from the powers that be) who also has a secret that is only revealed towards the end of the book. He also further develops the character of Dawn Ellis, and the plot also throws in shocks like the attack on one of their other colleagues, Jimmy Suttle.
Hurley is also capable of creating female characters who populate the book and makes them believable and recognisable even if in several cases you really can't ever like them.
Perhaps best of all was I didn't really work out the ending until it happened!
The final teaser: Will it all work out with Gabrielle?
Don't hesitate, buy it. However be warned you'll need to buy all the others in the series to see how the characters arrive at where they start from in this book.
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0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
one under, February 3, 2010
I was beginning to read Graham Hurley untill I bought the One Under book. It is a total fascist book! he is an individual who is manipulating the poublic opinion in favour of the most agressive policies agaisnt individuals human rights and represents the perfect example of the New wave which announces the arrival of a Totalitarian Fascist and corporative State. In his books the police is a bunch of idiots, the State is justified to transforms the people who do not think as the bankiers and the politicians into the evildoers of the World!
I am sorry for buying two of his books. Is a pity that people who pretend to be "writers' are propaganda geeks for the Power which justifies every crime against the Opposition and the people who is depicted as criminals and beasts.
This book is a shame! He relates an Idealist, a man who is Enviornmentalist and Politically opposed to the crimes of the British Government with drug cartels, as if everything that opposes the Police and the Homeland Security is a sign for cirminal.
Venezuela becomes the land origin for drugs. Hurley has never been in Venezuela and G.Hurley imagines that everybody who fights for the rights of his peope against corporations is a criminal government!
Untill now and efter living in Latin America for long periods I thimk that before throwing stones against George Galloway and all progressive thought Graham Hurley should begin to research for his stupid novels where policemen become mob and mob policemen. What a shame that he makes money from the lies and the Corruption. Do NOT BUY BOOKS from this pig.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Very Serious British Crime Novel that doesn't involve Sherlock Holmes, July 20, 2009
This book gets two stars because giving it one wouldn't be fair. I know I don't like "serious British crime novels that don't involve Sherlock Holmes", I'm a bigot that way, and yet I still picked up this book. A Serious British Crime Novel that didn't involve Sherlock Holmes. The plot was good, it was the characters I couldn't stand, nor the way the author introduced a subplot so full of coincidences that it made my teeth ache.
Some teeth aching subplot are acceptable, and even expected in crime novels, but I couldn't get past the Britishness of the characters, and lacking a background in British criminology, I had a difficult time wrapping my head around why they did many of the things they did, or how they got away with doing many of the things they did.
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