Peril [Mass Market Paperback]

Thomas H. Cook (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 25, 2005

Sara Labriola is a married woman haunted by the shattering secrets of her past—and terrified of the future. Tired of living in fear—and knowing that if she stays in her marriage she'll be killed—Sara decides to do the only thing she can: she makes herself disappear.

One afternoon, without telling a soul, she packs a single suitcase and leaves her life in Long Island behind. In New York City, she will reinvent herself. She will change her identity, and maybe even get the happy ending she's always dreamed of. But that dream is about to become a nightmare when her father-in-law decides to make her pay for abandoning his son.

Leo Labriola runs his modest but lucrative criminal organization like he does his family—with unspeakable brutality and zero tolerance for disobedience. He's determined to teach Sara a lesson and he'll stop at nothing to do it. Now six differently desperate and dangerous men—each with the power to destroy her—are on Sara's trail. But none of them suspect that the woman they are seeking has a dangerous secret of her own. For Sara is leading all of them down a path of private demons, past sins, and the deadliest peril.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A kaleidoscopic array of viewpoints tumble and shift in this latest suspense thriller by Edgar Award-winner Cook (The Interrogation, etc.), until the facts settle into place and the full picture can be understood. The complex arrangement of voices and events works smoothly, bringing each of the protagonists more clearly into focus as the story progresses. As the novel begins, Sara Labriola is fleeing Tony, her husband of nine years. It's not that she doesn't love him, but Tony's overbearing mobster father, Leo, casts a long shadow over Sara and Tony's marriage. Around the same time, sad sack Mortimer, a broke gambler who owes Leo $15,000, learns he has three months to live. Desperate to discharge his debts and leave a little something for his wife before he dies, he agrees to help Vinnie Caruso, who's following orders from Leo to find Sara. Mortimer turns to the shadowy Stark, an obsessive, tightly wound man who excels at finding people. Stark is haunted by the fate of a woman he found years earlier, and he suspects that this case, too, is not about a loving husband looking for his spouse. Sara, meanwhile, has stumbled into a New York nightclub frequented by Mortimer, where she gets a job as a singer. Cleverly manipulated coincidence provides much of the driving force here, to excellent effect. Although most of the characters are cookie-cutter noir, neat turns of phrase and tight plotting make for an engaging read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Edgar Award-winning Cook can be seen as a kind of master puppeteer, tightening complicated lines of suspense around the target puppet, usually an isolated woman with secrets any number of other people want her to die with--and fast. The more the target puppet moves (and Cook's heroines tend to move as far away from their pasts as possible), the more the lines surround and cripple her. Cook's latest follows this formula fairly closely. Sara Labriola lives in a lovely home in a beautiful neighborhood on Long Island, but her past casts long shadows, and her dreams have been splintered by a control-freak husband and his even more pathologically controlling father, a particularly ugly-acting Mob boss. Sara bolts, determined to leave no trace, hoping that New York City can make her invisible. Cook's narrative is couched throughout in extremely short chapters (a three-pager is unusual here). While this spy novel-style shuttling among different characters and locales lends edginess appropriate to a chase story, it can get dizzying and takes away from any real character development. Readers may get lost among the plot strands and, in a novel loaded with bad guys, forget the motivation of each. The dialogue is somewhat barren as well, being limited to the woman in peril's terse communications and the Anglo-Saxonisms of the mobsters. A terrific climax makes most of the above forgivable, however, especially for those who look to thrillers mainly for pulse pounding. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (January 25, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553582518
• ISBN-13: 978-0553582512
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,438 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

THOMAS H. COOK was born in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1947. He has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories. He received the best novel Edgar for The Chatham School Affair, the Martin Beck Award, the Herodotus Prize for best historical short story, and the Barry for best novel for Red Leaves, and has been nominated for numerous other awards.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking work by a true genius, February 26, 2004

By 

Larry Gandle (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Peril (Hardcover)

Thomas H. Cook is a genius. I do not recall saying that about any other writer I have ever reviewed. There are some fine writers out there whose work is consistently excellent. They are highly regarded by all who read the genre. Writers such as James Lee Burke, Mike Connelly, Dennis Lehane and others who write a superior novel in a style easily distinguished from others. However, Tom Cook not only writes a novel as good as any of the others, but, his style changes from one book to the next. Perhaps this is why he is not as wildly popular as some others. One never knows what to expect. Tom Cook has gone through phases where books consecutively written are somewhat similar in style and tone, such as the great BREAKHEART HILL or the Edgar winning, THE CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR- historical dramas evaluating love and loss. Now he is in a phase of writing modern crime novels.
PERIL concerns Sara Labriola, wife of a mobster's son. She leaves her husband, Tony, to start a new life away from her husband and especially away from her father in law, Leonardo. She lives with fears unknown to us and wants nothing more than to disappear. However, Leonardo refuses to let her run away and insists on having her found and punished. To accomplish this task he enlists his henchman, Caruso. Tony, fearing what his evil father will do to Sara, if found, hires his own man to find her. So the novel becomes a game of several cats and only one mouse.
The novel has a unique structure. It is told from the viewpoint of seven to eight different characters. Initially, each story is unique and quite disjointed. However, as we proceed through the novel, the individual stories get shorter and shorter thereby quickening the pacing and eventually as all comes together in the end flows from one narrative to the next. It is a unique structure and quite ingenious. The only weakness in the novel is the somewhat stereotypic depiction of the evil Leo Labriola and the ludicrous coincidence of Sara's choice of a bar to work in. Truly breathtaking.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Happy Ending, January 13, 2008

By 

Russell G. Moore (North Ridgeville, OH) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Peril (Mass Market Paperback)

Tremendous work once again by Thomas H. Cook.

I especially liked the book design - no chapters. It was broken into five acts which made the story so much more fluid.

The story added up at all ends. The characters were vibrant and alive. The ending was fantastic. That's where so many good mysteries fall off - the ending. Not with Cook. He nails the story from beginning to end.

Cook has a special way of exposing the darker side of humanity. He takes good advantage of that gift. That is one of the many reasons he is my hands-down favorite author.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Good Book By Cook, October 4, 2005

By 

Ronald E. Parsons "Ancient Reader" (Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Peril (Hardcover)

Only recently did I come upon Thomas Cook. I just happened to
pick out CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR, and as the saying goes, I
couldn't put it down. Now I have just finished PERIL. I sailed through
it with just as much enthusiasm despite the fact that the story's
presentation is markedly different from CHATHAM SCHOOL'S. PERIL'S
content is grittier too. Other reviewers have set out enough of the
story's carcass for anyone who wants to know something of how it will
look. Therefore I am limiting this to praising Cook's PERIL for its
excellence. Cook is a master at character development and clarity.
And he achieves these results while at the same time not burdening
readers with wordiness.

I am not one to praise a book because of its complexity or high
degree of challenge to the reader. Nor do I seek out works of simple
escapism to dive into. Instead I seek literature that captures my
attention fast and holds it, without my having to work myself into a state
of mental exhaustion. So far Thomas Cook has met my requirements
expertly. I am very glad to have stumbled on to Cook. I relish the
knowledge that he has written a substantial body of work to
entertain me in future.