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lilfox's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
ianayris's review
5.0
Having read Howard Linskey's THE DAMAGE - review here, I was more than excited to have the opportunity of reviewing the follow up - THE DEAD
THE DAMAGE is the third book in the David Blake series, featuring Tyneside's numero uno gangster, David Blake. Having returned to Newcastle to take control of his empire, Blake's days are spent taking care of business, unencumbered by the law, and doting on his wife and his daughter.
But when the startling identity of the dead girl lying on the river bank is confirmed, it looks like David Blake's comfortable existence will come crashing down around him. It's going to take all his nouse to keep his head above water on this one. It's the dead, see. They might not be able to talk, but they whisper - they whisper into the ears of the bereaved and they create images of desperate suffering, and they cry out for resolution. But it's not only the recently deceased Blake has to contend with. Blake's whole life has been filled with the dead and the dying and the missing. And when you've had a life like that, it's bound to catch up with you some time.
As in the previous two books in the serious, Linskey's prose crackles and burns and pops off the page. Blake is brilliantly written, as are his cohorts - Kinane and Palmer. There are sub-plots and side characters galore - deviant accountants, old time gangster associates, gun-wielding Serbians, and even a nutty Russian billionaire straight out of a Bond film. Indeed, the sub-plots are so strong each almost deserves a novel all to itself. THE DAMAGE stands defiantly in the gangster/crime genre with its gang turf and tangled webs of violent retribution, but something deeper lies beneath. There is a moral compass to David Blake, a notion that he was not born to do this work. And that's not a good thing for a man where one sign of vulnerability could spell the end of it all.
Blake might have a chance to deal with the dead of present - after all, that's his business - but it's the dead of the past, the ghosts that haunt his every waking moment that could be his undoing.
THE DAMAGE proves Linskey to be at the forefront of British crime writing. The quote from The Times on the front of the book reads: 'A Tyneside Dashiell Hammett to put Martina Cole firmly in her place'. Not sure I agree with the Dashiell Hammett bit - more Ed McBain. And as for the Martina Cole reference, Howard Linskey is in a whole different league.
THE DAMAGE is the third book in the David Blake series, featuring Tyneside's numero uno gangster, David Blake. Having returned to Newcastle to take control of his empire, Blake's days are spent taking care of business, unencumbered by the law, and doting on his wife and his daughter.
But when the startling identity of the dead girl lying on the river bank is confirmed, it looks like David Blake's comfortable existence will come crashing down around him. It's going to take all his nouse to keep his head above water on this one. It's the dead, see. They might not be able to talk, but they whisper - they whisper into the ears of the bereaved and they create images of desperate suffering, and they cry out for resolution. But it's not only the recently deceased Blake has to contend with. Blake's whole life has been filled with the dead and the dying and the missing. And when you've had a life like that, it's bound to catch up with you some time.
As in the previous two books in the serious, Linskey's prose crackles and burns and pops off the page. Blake is brilliantly written, as are his cohorts - Kinane and Palmer. There are sub-plots and side characters galore - deviant accountants, old time gangster associates, gun-wielding Serbians, and even a nutty Russian billionaire straight out of a Bond film. Indeed, the sub-plots are so strong each almost deserves a novel all to itself. THE DAMAGE stands defiantly in the gangster/crime genre with its gang turf and tangled webs of violent retribution, but something deeper lies beneath. There is a moral compass to David Blake, a notion that he was not born to do this work. And that's not a good thing for a man where one sign of vulnerability could spell the end of it all.
Blake might have a chance to deal with the dead of present - after all, that's his business - but it's the dead of the past, the ghosts that haunt his every waking moment that could be his undoing.
THE DAMAGE proves Linskey to be at the forefront of British crime writing. The quote from The Times on the front of the book reads: 'A Tyneside Dashiell Hammett to put Martina Cole firmly in her place'. Not sure I agree with the Dashiell Hammett bit - more Ed McBain. And as for the Martina Cole reference, Howard Linskey is in a whole different league.
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