JACK KERLEY - 'THE HUNDREDTH MAN'
Harper-Collins
ISBN: 0-000-718059-4
2004 (Paperback)
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THE HUNDREDTH MAN
written by
JACK KERLEY
Written in the first person for most of the novel, Jack Kerley's debut, The Hundredth Man, conjures up images and emotions of a character's past that is both disturbing and refreshing in equal parts.
Carson Ryder is Kerley's Alabama Detective, called to investigate why a killer might feel it's not enough to merely behead a victim, but also scrawl seemingly meaningless words in tiny letters, across the corpse. When another similarly mutilated body turns up, Ryder comes to realise that there is more afoot than simple craziness; the killer is on a mission and it falls to Ryder, and his partner, Harry Nautilus, to discover exactly what that mission is … for the most part without the support of their superiors.
This is a taut Crime drama, filled with enough snappy dialogue
and credible action to keep the pages flipping across at speed for even
the most ardent of devotees. There are one or two concerns with plausibility
in the sub-plotting; I've never known an alcoholic to lose the taste
for drinking in so short a time as Ryder's prospective love interest
does in this novel, for instance. To do that takes around about one
hundred and forty-five years approximately, not the forty-eight hours
insinuated here, but these are minor quibbles to the crux of the story.
And that crux is Ryder's relationship
with his incarcerated brother. Doesn't everybody want a sibling so nasty,
so infuriating and yet so damn smart? Okay, maybe not the nasty
and the infuriating comes with the territory of having siblings; but
the smart … oh yes, we'd like to know anybody so smart as Carson's
brother.
In the creation of Carson Ryder, Harry Nautilus and Jeremy Ryder, Jack Kerley has come up with such sure fire winners who will no doubt, someday soon, carve niches into the night of Crime lore that will long remain distinctly bright and original.
More information - www.jackkerley.com
“Hi Chris,
Thanks for the review. I'll take it. I'll come back to check other reviews
in your site because it looks great, visually, and I want to dig a bit.
I plan to revamp my site a bit adding reviews. Yours will be there.
Gracias.”
Jack
Kerley 2005
Order this book online - Linghams Booksellers
break the rules as I see fit.” - Chris High 2003.