A Quiet Vendetta

by R. J. Ellory Narrated by Donald Corren

Overview

Written by award-winning thriller heavyweight R. J. Ellory, this ambitious crime novel takes the author's skill for suspense to a spellbinding level.

When Catherine Ducane disappears in the heart of New Orleans, the cops react fast-after all, she is the governor's daughter. But the case gets very strange, very quickly. Her bodyguard turns up horribly mutilated in the trunk of a beautiful vintage car, and when the kidnapper calls, he doesn't want money; he wants time alone with a certain government functionary.

Dragged down to the deep South from the New York district attorney's office, Ray Hartmann puzzles over why he has been summoned and why the mysterious kidnapper, an elderly Cuban named Ernesto Perez, wants to tell him his life story. But by the time the pieces fall into place, it's already too late. A Quiet Vendetta is both the epic story of one man's life in the Italian Mafia-a story ranging from Cuba to Chicago-and a thrilling tale of rage, love, and loss. With tension to match the best of Cussler, Patterson, and his own bestselling work, A Quiet Vendetta confirms R. J. Ellory's place at the forefront of the genre.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

May well be the best Mafia novel since The Godfather, it's one damn fine book and should be highly recommended to all but the coziest of crime-fiction fans. —Elliott Swanson, Booklist USA

Beautifully written, this is a novel to get lost in, a novel to savor and one that is a long ride into the darkness, and if you recall reading Mario Puzo's The Godfather as a teenager [as I did], then this powerful book will make you relive that memory - Masterful but beware of the brutality, because it comes out of the most literate prose I have read for many years.—Ali Karim, SHOTS

Ellory got his thriller writing off to a good start with Candlemoth and followed up tidily with Ghostheart. This book, though, should propel him right up there to battle it out with the big boys ... a satisfying puzzler, and you'll be turning the pages at a brisk rate.—LADSMAG

With exquisite pace and perfect timing, Ellory has given us a piercing assessment of the nature of love, loyalty and obsessive revenge, not to mention a deep understanding of la cosa nostra.—Matthew Lewin, GUARDIAN

Ellory's entrancing tale weaves the two storylines together, keeping you turning the pages ... this is one of the best mafia reads since Mario Puzo's Godfather—BIRMINGHAM SUNDAY MERCURY

This is a beautifully written, atmospheric novel that warps effectively between a hugely enjoyable thriller and an authentic recreation of the claustrophobic Mob world of brutality and paranoia—TRIBUNE

APRIL 2013 - AudioFile

Narrator Donald Corren does a fantastic job with Ellory’s novel. The story centers around a Mafia hit man named Ernesto Perez, who kidnaps the daughter of Louisiana’s governor in order to gain the opportunity to tell his life story. The main listener turns out to be Ray Hartmann, a New York District Attorney’s Office special investigator who is struggling to stay sober and save his marriage. Corren uses a Cuban accent in his portrayal of Perez, delivering the killer’s story in a low-key, calm tone that accentuates the brutality of his world. Corren also conveys Hartmann’s desperation to return from New Orleans to New York to see his wife and daughter and to rebuild what he has let himself destroy. G.S.D. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

The hits keep coming in multiple-murder-master Ellory's (The Anniversary Man, 2010, etc.) latest--literally. It's not so easy in the Big Easy, not in summer, when "the storm drains backed up in the last week of July, and...spilled God-only-knew-what out into the gutters." One of the things they cough up is bodies. As Ellory's tale opens, medical examiner Jim Emerson and a cop with the poetic name of Verlaine are puzzling out one brutal specimen, an investigation instantly complicated by the kidnapping of the governor's daughter. It being Louisiana, the governor is, of course, hopelessly corrupt. Even so, justice is justice, and Ellory conjures up a worthy squad of cops to chase down the bad guy. This being an Ellory tale, though, it's the bad guy who does the chasing--or at least the talking, for more than anything else the kidnapper seems to want only a forum to get a few things off his mind about a decidedly checkered past. He talks--"I was Ernesto Cabrera Perez, a man capable of killing other men, a gifted man, a dangerous man"--and he talks, though the occasionally dorm-room-philosophical gab is pleasingly punctuated by lots of carnage. One wonders whether Ellory has been keeping company with mob assassins himself, to judge by some of the details he presents; suffice it to say that an attentive student could carve out an independent-study curriculum in dealing death from Perez's leisurely account of his adventures, so elegantly delivered that one might imagine the lines having been written for, say, Javier Bardem ("I am here of my own volition, and I assure you I am quite unarmed"). The tale-spinning goes on a little long, and the tale itself untightens in the telling, but Ellory delivers a neat conclusion that's not exactly instant karma, but close enough. It even approaches happy, if you don't mind your happiness--and a lesson in family values--soaked in blood and brains. A satisfying effort in a franchise devoted to double-digit mayhem.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169776935
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	11/19/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos