Walking Dead (Atticus Kodika) [Hardcover]

Greg Rucka (Author)

Book Description

Series: Atticus Kodika | Publication Date: April 28, 2009

In this explosive new thriller, Greg Rucka, the acclaimed author of Shooting at Midnight and Patriot Acts, sets bodyguard-turned-international-fugitive Atticus Kodiak on a one-man crusade where being willing to die for your ideals isn’t enough. You have to be willing to do much worse.…

I will take your place in times of danger.

As an ex-bodyguard, Atticus Kodiak knew the sentiment well. He’d once based his career on it. Now it could cost him more than just his livelihood—more than even his life. For as he wakes to the sound of gunfire, the nightmare is about to begin again.

Atticus knew very well that people came to a place like Kobuleti to hide. After all, that’s why he and Alena Cizkova had come to the secluded Georgian town in the former U.S.S.R. But Atticus never asked his friend and neighbor Bakhar Lagidze why he was in Kobuleti or what he might be hiding from. Now it’s too late. Bakhar and his family have been brutally murdered, and the thuggish local police chief has declared it a murder-suicide. Everyone—even Alena—seems satisfied to leave it at that.

Except for Atticus.

He knows what the police won’t acknowledge: that one person survived the bloodbath in the Lagidze household—their fourteen-year-old daughter. And the nightmare she’s about to experience will make her wish she’d died with the rest.

To rescue her Atticus must enter a web that takes him from Russia to Istanbul, that stretches from Dubai to Las Vegas. But what troubles Atticus the most is that Alena—once one of the world’s most dangerous assassins and a woman who fears nothing—is clearly terrified of what he’s uncovered. And as Atticus gets closer to learning why, the closer he gets to destroying the life they have made, and each other.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Rucka's adrenaline-filled seventh novel to feature ex-bodyguard Atticus Kodika (after Patriot Acts), Atticus and his ex-assassin lover, Alena Cizkova, are living under assumed names in the remote town of Kobuleti in the Republic of Georgia. When the family of their next-door neighbor, Bakhar Lagidze, is slaughtered and Bakhar's 14-year-old daughter, Tiasa, is kidnapped, Atticus vows to do anything to get her back. After discovering Tiasa was sold to pay off her father's debt, Atticus reluctantly immerses himself in the seedy world of human trafficking, which takes him across Eastern Europe to Nevada, with stops in Dubai and Amsterdam along the way. When the men he's chasing target Alena for retribution, she too goes on the run, with help from an unlikely source: hard-nosed New York PI—and Atticus's ex-lover—Bridgett Logan, last seen in Critical Space. Series fans who have come to expect a nonstop thrill ride with a topical angle won't be disappointed. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The evolution of Atticus Kodiak continues. In the beginning (Keeper, for example, from 1996), Atticus was a professional bodyguard, a man who knew how to use his intellect and physical strength to maximum advantage. But, by Patriot Acts (2007), Atticus was a fugitive, running from people who wanted to see him dead. Now he’s hiding in a small town in Georgia, the former Soviet country, living with Alena Cizkova, the former professional assassin and the love of his life. When a neighbor’s family is horribly murdered and their 14-year-old daughter abducted, Atticus risks his own life and his relationship with Alena to find the girl. Like Jack Bauer in the hit TV series 24, Atticus has almost completed the transition from protector to vigilante. As we watch him edge ever closer to the moral line that divides heroes from villains, we worry that his inner turmoil will tear him apart. And that may be the clearest sign that Rucka has created a classic character: we are emotionally invested in Atticus and his fate. A fine installment in a terrific series. --David Pitt

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055380474X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553804744
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.1 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,008,388 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The author of four novels about professional bodyguard Atticus Kodiak -- Keeper (nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America), Finder, Smoker, and Shooting at Midnight, Greg Rucka has been writing since he was eight years old, and hopefully is improving with age. A longtime comics fan, his first graphic novel series was the suspense thriller Whiteout, published by Oni Press and nominated for three Eisner Awards in 1999. Since that time he has been a contributing writer for DC Comics and an active participant in the Batman series of titles.
Born and raised in California, he earned his undergraduate degree at Vassar College and his MFA at the University of Southern California. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Rucka has two tattoos, and rides a motorcycle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars electrifying thriller, May 2, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walking Dead (Atticus Kodika) (Hardcover)

In Kobuleti, Republic of Georgia lives former bodyguard Atticus Kodika and his lover retired assassin Alena Cizkova. The couple use aliases to hide their identity from the outside world. However, even in this remote village violence explodes. Someone assaults and violently kills their neighbor Bakhar Lagidze, his wife and his eight year old son; they kidnap his fourteen years old daughter, Tiasa. The local cops quickly rule murder-suicide; outraged Atticus pledges to rescue the teen though that means breaking his vow to not get involved after the massive manhunt directed by top government officials (see POLITICAL GAMES).

Following her trail, he learns she was abducted to sell as merchandise to pay off her late father's debts. Keeping to his vow though he detests having to even make inquiries inside the sordid human trafficking slave market, he pursues clues that lead to the Middle East, back to Europe, and eventually to Nevada. However those he seeks to pay for their murders and kidnapping know he is on their tail and go after Alena. No "Drama queen", she flees for her life with the help of Atticus' former lover New York based private investigator Bridgett Logan.

The action is non-stop, brutal, and bloody even before Atticus begins his rescue quest. Obstinate and brave Atticus is like a bull dog refusing to give up the mission though the odds are overwhelmingly against him. However, what makes this electrifying thriller super is the ease in which Greg Rucka interweaves without preaching or slowing down the plot a political commentary on human trafficking in which governments pretend the slave market does not exist.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book to Date in the Kodiak Mythos!, May 12, 2009

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking Dead (Atticus Kodika) (Hardcover)

It's been almost two years since the release of a new Greg Rucka thriller. It's not as if he's been idle; Rucka is active in the comic book world, currently writing Action Comics for DC. We last saw him in novel form, however, in 2007's PATRIOT ACTS, which continued his Atticus Kodiak series. WALKING DEAD, his latest work, also stars Atticus, and it's a fine addition.

Rucka is in pulse-pounding form here, combining an addictive narrative with a riveting storyline to create what may well be his best book to date in the Kodiak mythos. WALKING DEAD opens with Atticus and his lover, Alena, living in Kobuleti, Georgia. As Atticus describes it, Kobuleti is a place where people go to hide, and indeed, that is precisely what Atticus and Alena are doing. Their neighbors, the Lagidze family, appear to be doing the same thing, and the two households maintain a cordial but respectful distance from each other, with the primary contact between them consisting of dance lessons provided by Alena to Tiasa, the Lagidzes' 14-year-old daughter.

All of that changes suddenly and irrevocably when the Lagidze family is slaughtered in the dead of night and Tiasa is abducted. The plot from thereon is simple: Atticus moves heaven and earth and attempts to find Tiasa and bring her back. What does he do? Everything. What does he expend? Everything. What does he sacrifice? Money, body, and a part of his soul.

Tiasa, he quickly discovers, is in the hands of people who are the embodiment, the manifestation, of an evil so dastardly that there is no justice appropriate for it other than the ultimate one that Atticus, for the most part, dispenses as he follows a trail that grows cold within a matter of hours and seemingly impossible to track with each passing day. It is one that will take him from the former Soviet bloc to Dubai, from Turkey to New York, from Ireland to Las Vegas, trailing an opponent who is fully prepared for trouble.

If you thought you knew Atticus before, think again: he has never been so focused, so driven, so formidable. Yet Rucka instills within him humanity, goodness, and fragility, if you will that we don't always find in fictional heroes. Atticus gets banged up here, sustaining damage that he almost can't walk away from, and it takes its toll as the novel progresses. But he has much to live for, including a bombshell that relieves some of the unrelenting grimness of what he encounters.
Rucka is possessed of a fine sense of irony steeled with tension, one that is infused into WALKING DEAD from first page to last. You'll have this book open for so long at one sitting that you will feel as if it is bound with a coiled spring until you finish it.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly enjoyable, engaging read..., May 10, 2009

By 

Rob Pugh - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walking Dead (Atticus Kodika) (Hardcover)

If this does turn out to be the last Atticus Kodiak book, as the author has hinted, it's a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging conclusion to the series. Rucka's craftsmanship is at his deftest here - it's one of those books that will get its hooks into you and not let go to sleep until your eyes utterly fail you. He explores some dark areas and topics of the international scene, and as usual, mixes up kickass action with great locales, research, character beats and humor.

While not my favorite of the Atticus series - still Critical Space for me - it's still a 5 star/can't put it down book. Highly recommended.