Rating: 4/5
Review:
A very good noir novel
I thought this was a very good noir crime novel. The protagonist and first-person narrator is Nic, a freelance underworld enforcer and killer in London who is employed by a crime boss to find his missing daughter. I found it fresh, gripping and well written, and I became very involved with the story.
The story is bleak, very violent in places and very well told. The prose is readable and the characters generally well drawn and believable. I particularly liked the neat sketching in of how Nic came into his "occupation" without a lot of cumbersome back-story to weigh down the plot. Things move at a good pace and I found the London underworld which Jameson depicts to be repellently plausible. I did think that the culmination of the story was a little weaker, but certainly not enough to spoil anything. Do be warned that there is liberal use of what TV warnings call "very strong language" and some truly sickening violence in places, but I thought both were completely justified and absolutely true to the characters Jameson depicts.
If you want likeable characters to identify with or object to swearing and violence then this book won't be for you. Otherwise, I can recommend it as an exciting, involving and in places quite thoughtful crime novel.
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