Speak No Evil: A Joe Donovan Thriller (Joe Donovan Thrillers) [Hardcover]

Martyn Waites (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2010 | Series: Joe Donovan Thrillers

In the new Joe Donovan thriller, Waites’ ravaged hero must help a woman determine if her recent visions are related to the death of a young boy.

Anne Marie is back in the hometown she hasn't seen for forty years, trying to live a normal life with her partner and teenage son. But that's impossible for Anne Marie. Because forty years ago, when she was eleven, she killed a little boy. She is trying to make peace with her past by telling her story to journalist Joe Donovan. But it's not that simple.

Suffering from horrifying visions, she sometimes does bad things. Things she has no memory of afterward. So when a teenager on her housing estate is murdered and she wakes up with blood on her hands, Anne Marie naturally fears the worst. Her fragile life falling apart, Anne Marie turns to those she loves. But where she was expecting support, she finds only betrayal. Desperate, she turns to Donovan for help. But Donovan may have his own reasons for helping her..reasons that have to do with the disappearance of his own son...

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Waites's brilliant fourth Joe Donovan thriller (after White Riot) puts him in the same league as such established contemporary noir masters as Ian Rankin, John Harvey, and Denise Mina. When Mae Blacklock was 11, she strangled a boy to death in a fit of rage. The story, which made for lurid tabloid fodder, became a common reference point in Britain for juvenile homicide. Forty years later, Mae, now Anne Marie Smeaton, asks Newcastle PI and former journalist Joe Donovan to work with her on a tell-all memoir. Waites alternates between Anne Marie's interview sessions and an increasingly bizarre series of crimes, in which first one and then two children in nearby communities are murdered. Donovan's investigative team gradually uncovers a pattern of child killings over the years that appears to follow Smeaton's frequent moves. Donovan's continued search for his son, who disappeared six years earlier, at age six, raises the emotional stakes in this searing crime novel. (June)
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From Booklist

Joe Donovan turns his obsessive search for his kidnapped son over to co-workers while he interviews a woman with a story to tell. As a child, Mae Blacklock was sexually abused by her prostitute mother, her mother’s customers, and her grandfather. Her powerlessness and anger caused her to kill an even younger child. Four decades later, she’s free from prison but still paying the price, suffering blackouts, and living under an assumed name in shabby, violent estates. In each estate where she’s lived, another child has died. Mae isn’t sure that she’s not a serial killer. Donovan must sort it all out. Waites seems prone to juggle one more ball than he should; he did it in Bone Machine (2008), and he’s done it again here. Mae’s story and the vivid portrait of life in England’s urban estates are grisly and compelling. So are Waites’ musings on the price of powerlessness and on the power of family to strengthen or destroy, but Donovan’s abandonment of his obsession strains credulity. Still, the detective’s fans will find the good outweighing the not-so-good this time around. --Thomas Gaughan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Pegasus; 1 edition (June 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160598096X
• ISBN-13: 978-1605980966
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,747,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking Back, August 10, 2010

By 

Ted Feit (Long Beach, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Speak No Evil: A Joe Donovan Thriller (Joe Donovan Thrillers) (Hardcover)

Three subplots run through this Joe Donovan novel, the fourth in the series. The main theme involves a book Joe is to ghostwrite based on interviews with a woman, Ann Marie, who murdered a young boy when she was eleven years old. As the interviews continue, further information concerning additional murders of children over the years after her release from prison raise the possibility that she continues to kill. Meanwhile Joe and his team are attempting to recover his lost son, David.

Intertwined with information about Ann Marie's past and present are current-day occurrences, which tend to complicate and frighten her, so she withholds memories from Joe, especially regarding her son, Jack. While she is attempting to come to terms with her evil deeds, it becomes more and more difficult for her, and finally she has to depend on him for help.

The characters are formidable, the prose penetrating, the pace incessant. Highly recommended.