"It’s high time Ellory takes his rightful place on crime fiction’s A-list."

We love the entire R.J. Ellory ouvre, but we're especially thrilled to see Booklist award a glowing (and starred!) review to his upcoming thriller A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE. Stay tuned for information on his U.S. appearances!

BOOKLIST
Issue: May 1, 2011
A Simple Act of Violence (starred review) Ellory, R. J. (Author)
Jun 2011. 464 p. Overlook, hardcover, $24.95. (9781590203187).

Ellory (author of Strand magazine’s Thriller of the Year winner, A Quiet Belief in Angels, 2009) is back with an amazing new novel. It’s not only a mystery with enough plot twists to keep the most jaded fan of the genre guessing, it’s also a high-speed car chase of a thriller. The bones of the book are structured around the well-reported CIA/Reagan/Bush complicity in skimming money from the cocaine trade to build the infamous drugs-for-guns bridge that supported contra intervention in Nicaragua.

Launching from a seeming “simple act of violence,” Ellory lures the reader into a Machiavellian tapestry of international proportions. The premise is deceptively simple: two Washington, D.C., beat cops are assigned to a series of murder cases that appear to be the usual and customary work of a psychopathic serial killer. However, the further they get into the case, the stranger the possibilities become. Many writers who attempt to construct a novel with levels of geopolitical intrigue found here wind up producing a string of lame polemics or, even worse, a conspiracy-theory rant. It’s a tribute to Ellory’s mastery of his craft to note that he avoids these pitfalls completely.

This is a superbly entertaining book and one that will endure in the reader’s thoughts long after the last page turns. After several fine novels, it’s high time Ellory takes his rightful place on crime fiction’s A-list.