Customer Reviews

Walking Dead (Atticus Kodika)

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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

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

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.

Atticus Kodiak is an assassin and sometime bodyguard. Currently he's hiding out with his lover, Alena Cizkova, in Kobuleti, a Geogian town in what used to be U.S.S.R.

Someone makes the mistake of killing Atticus' neighbor, and the man's wife and son. However they take the man's daughter in order to sell her to human trafficers so she can be used as a prostitute.
In a plot similar to the movie, "Taken" with Liam Neeson, Atticus decides to save the girl.

He learns the name of the man who killed the neighbor and took the girl. First he learns where the man took her, then he permanently pays the man back for his crime.

The action is swift and the suspense excellent. In addition to an exciting story, it's interesting to see the places Atticus travels to in attempt to save the child.

He goes to Dubai where he finds a house with child prostitutes. He kills a number of very ban men and rescues 7 young girls but not the one he wanted.

When he returns to Kobuleti, his home has been burned to the ground but his lover, Alena is safe.

Nothing is going to stop Atticus. He gets beaten up, inflicts pain on others but in the end (you will have to read the story to find out).

Well done and highly recommended.
A real page turner!

Another solid entry in the Atticus Kodiak mythos and while I have to admit I do miss the old days when he was just a bodyguard, you'd be very hardpressed to find another author daring enough to change the life of his character so dramatically and see where it takes the writer, his characters, and the reader. While the book is not for the first-time reader of Rucka's work, starting with the first book and getting to this point is an amazing journey. It does seem more and more like the paths of his two novel lines will one day cross, but that makes no difference to me. Just keep writing, man. Keep writing.

Greg Rucka keeps the reader hooked in this heart-pounding, wrenching story of human trafficking. The book starts off in Georgia, where Atticus Kodiak lives with Drama. The brutal homicide of an entire family entices Atticus to risk his life, seeking to solve the details of this mystery. As he gets closer to finding what he is looking for, a personal surprise he did not expect, raises the stakes. Atticus must choose to save, and protect multiple lives as he trots across the globe using different guises. This book is an eye-opener into a major problem that sadly exists today, around the world.

In Greg Rucka's "Walking Dead," Atticus Kodiak (the narrator) and his girlfriend, Alena Cizkova, are living under assumed names in Kobuleti, a secluded town in the Republic of Georgia. They remain security conscious and just a bit paranoid because of the many enemies they have made in the past. The trouble begins one night when Atticus witnesses the tail end of a massacre at the home of Bakhar Lagidze, who lived nearby with his wife, eight-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter, Tiasa. Some Eastern European thugs had invaded the Lagidze home and abducted Tiasa.

Atticus has a choice. He can forget about this lovely and vulnerable adolescent whom he and Alena have grown to love, or he can risk everything in an effort to pick up her trail. Since the police are corrupt, there will be little help from that quarter. Although Atticus fears that going after the truth will cost him greatly, he cannot, in good conscience, remain uninvolved. What follows is an odyssey that will take our hero to such far-flung locations as Turkey, Dubai, Amsterdam, and Las Vegas. During his travels, Atticus encounters some very unpleasant individuals who enslave both men (for labor) and women (for sex), keeping their captives under guard as long as they remain useful. Atticus describes his tribulations with little emotion. When he meets someone who tries to kill him, he does what he must to stay alive.

This is a brutal and intense tale that contains numerous scenes of wanton cruelty. Rucka's theme is that human trafficking goes on all over the world, right under our noses, and little is being done to stop it. Both Atticus and Alena are caught up in the quest to rescue Tiasa, and they will need all of their skills in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat to survive. The author ably describes how Atticus's tenacity, ability to think ahead, and resilience keep him in the game. A lesser man facing such seemingly insurmountable obstacles would have quickly retreated.

This novel has more than its share of profanity and many unpleasant references to bodily functions. The villains are one-dimensional brutes, and Atticus and Alena prove to be, paradoxically, both vulnerable and superhuman. What saves "Walking Dead" from being just another blood-soaked thriller are Atticus's and Alena's touching love story, Rucka's harrowing depiction of a crime that knows no boundaries, and Atticus's valiant effort to expiate his many sins by doing something positive. He wishes to help not only Tiasa, but also the many other youngsters who have been sold into a life of slavery and humiliation. Rucka's crisp and unflinching writing style, sardonic wit, and gripping plot make this a powerful, fast-paced, and suspenseful story.

Having read all the Atticus Kodiak books and seeing the series go through change after change (from just a simple bodyguard protecting an abortion doctor to hunting down human traffickers a world away with his assassin girlfriend), I have no gripe concerning the series, just the hope that Mr. Rucka has not run out of ideas or scenarios to place Mr. Kodiak in.

While not the strongest Kodiak story for me Walking Dead still warrants 5 stars because it kept me engaged from beginning to end and I want more.

Book 7, featuring Atticus Kodiak

This series and author is new to me, I realize starting with the 7th instalment is not ideal but with 'Walking Dead' I was quickly hooked. Although it may have been most helpful to have read the previous books, I immediately felt comfortable in the story and found it could easily stand by its own.

Written in the first person in a clear and concise prose the story grabs the attention from the start with its action, timely plot and stone cold protagonists that have been tested over and over and pushed to the edge seemingly right into the abyss at times. Do not fear as in all great thrillers the characters are like the energiser bunny ...they just keep on going...

This riveting storyline opens with Atticus and his lover Alena living in Kobuleti, Georgia, a place where they felt they could start a new life and distance themselves from the past. Their neighbours, the Lagidze family appear to have done the same. One day suddenly everything changes when the Lagidze family is slaughtered and Tiasa, the 14 year old daughter, is abducted. At this point Atticus swears to move heaven and hell to find Tiasa and give her a chance to live a life without fear. When Atticus discovers that Tiasa has been sold to sex traffickers to pay her father's debt, he becomes even more determined to find her; the trail takes him to Dubai, Amsterdam and Las Vegas

While on the home front we see a second thread quickly developing one as important as the first: Alena narrowly escapes an attack and a terrible fire'..at this point I wondered if there was a possible link to the kidnapping or something from their past coming to back to haunt them? The suspense just kept on growing.

This thriller is very captivating and one of the best I have read in a long time. The storyline is well-crafted with plenty of brutal and never ending action that exploits the dark side of human trafficking and the political shenanigans that it often attracts. The scenes are crawling with details that are sure to raise goose bumps. I was emotionally invested in Atticus; I wanted him to succeed regardless. This cleverly written thriller will leave you on a reader's high.

When I first started reading about Atticus, I thought the book was a bit boring. But... about a 1/3 of the way into the first book about him, I was totally hooked. Read it way too fast and missed it after it was done. Then I found this book and took it up. Read it too fast too... Argh. It is difficult to tell you exactly why.

Rucka makes you like the characters in the book, even when they're "bad" people. And the story is very interesting. I don't know if he knows about these places around the world or if he just researches them, but they are very detailed and believable. As others have said, Atticus is a conflicted guy - no super hero. He is often injured, can't see because his glasses are broken, and runs into stumbling blocks at every turn. Nevertheless, you will pull for him and generally be satisfied with the happenings, though they aren't always happy.

I have read many, many books of this genre. This is one of the best. Highly recommend (the whole Atticus series). Read them - you won't be sorry.