Customer Reviews

Sacrifice

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

 

 

Well, I enjoyed this more than I did Karma or Stone City, both by the same author. I found the setting to be believable and learned quite a bit about illegal banking techniques and roofing. And I would read a book centering on any one of the characters in this one; they're that well-written.

I read several hundred books a year. I do not like Elmore Leonard; his material is mostly unbelievable and not especially exciting or funny. Most mysteries are formulaic and boring. Smith is a different sort of writer. He's gritty and real in a way that's hard to define. The plot isn't unique, but the treatment made the book. Can not believe the other reviews! Sooo many books are just the same thing; Lescroart, Parker, Cornwell, etc. Smith writes a mystery that's not just off the assembly line.

Tyler Pierce is an extremely likeable anti-hero with an odd mixture of flaws and strengths. He is a knight errant with no confidence in the law enforcement establishment and a strong preference for doing things his own way. The author is a skilled writer who introduces the reader to the killer early, but still manages to maintain the suspense to the end.

In Mitchell Smith's "Sacrifice," a bank robbery nets the surviving thieves nearly a million dollars each. For one of them (Tyler Pierce), though, the plans he had for the money soon become insignificant. His daughter, with whom he has not had contact in years, becomes the victim of a serial killer in Florida. Pierce then decides to take his funds to use them to hunt down the killer. With the contacts that his criminal background provides, Pierce is able to find help in a few sources, foremost among whom is a prostitute with a valuable knowledge of the area.

The conflict of a hardened criminal against a serial killer has the potential to lapse into a cartoon, but Smith, to his credit, avoids that by a large margin. On the other hand, the portrayal of the killer does seem to lapse into a sort of fantasy of what such a killer's mind might be like. Whether the killer is realistic or not, the killer's inner monologue does not seem real, and that fact detracts from the novel substantially.

"Sacrifice" is not so much a thriller as it is a detective novel involving a most unlikely pair of detectives, and it is good enough to keep the reader's interest. Further, it rises above many, perhaps even most, of the genre entries. But the book is not much more than a ridealong, a chance for the reader to follow a singular investigation. The characters, though they interact, seem not to affect each other to the point that they change substantially. The ending does reveal a significant change in one of the characters, but it is almost without precedent. That is, there is nearly no foreshadowing to suggest the dramatic change.

For people in search of an intelligent thriller, with both the advantages and liabilities of that pair of words, "Sacrifice" is recommended. However, readers in search of a character study should look elsewhere.

Smith has written two excellent novels, Stone City and Karma. Those novels had strong characters and interesting plots, both absent from this boring and shallow mess. The main character, a bank robber whose daughter is killed, never changes or grows as do Smith's earlier protagonists. The killer belongs on a cheesy made-for-TV movie and the resolution is laughable.Let's hope Smith goes back to his earlier form.

This book definitely held my interest. What an interesting idea for the criminal to be victimized. Made me think about the fact that criminals are real people just like those of us who are law abiding. I was breathless with suspense but got bogged down during some of the descriptive landscape passages. All in all a real thriller with a main character that you just can't help but fall in love with