Sleeping Dogs - Hardcover

Thomas Perry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679410643 ISBN 13: 9780679410645

Publisher: Random House, 1992

Synopsis

He came to England to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he's a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there's been a price on his head.
Now, after a decade, they've found him. The Butcher's Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he's locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . .
"Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller's job is to make you turn the pages until the story's done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn't try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling what might happen."
-- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World


From the Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ngland to rest. He calls himself Michael Shaeffer, says he's a retired American businessman. He goes to the races, dates a kinky aristocrat, and sleeps with dozens of weapons. Ten years ago it was different. Then, he was the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled mob hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war. Ever since, there's been a price on his head.<br>Now, after a decade, they've found him. The Butcher's Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he's locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . .<br>"Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller's job is to make you turn the pages until the story's done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn't try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling wh

Reviews

Much of the action in Perry's disappointing follow-up to The Butcher's Boy remains jumpy and disjointed as former hitman Michael Schaeffer, aka Charles Frederick Ackerman, William Wolf or Butcher's Boy, is brought out of hiding in England. Ten years have passed since Schaeffer foiled the attempt of mob employer Carlo Balacontano to have him killed in lieu of payment and then framed the Mafia boss for a particularly grisly murder. As this story opens, Schaeffer avoids an assassination attempt at the Brighton racetrack and realizes his cover has been blown. He returns to New York to find out who ordered the hit and how many bad guys may still be after him. Despite the lurid fascination of the characters' pasts, the plot seems more to congeal than thicken as Schaeffer tries to dispose of or evade all who might be on his trail, including Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Waring, so that he can retire again to the English countryside. With heroes and villains so easily interchangeable, readers may wonder who they should root for, and why. 50,000 first printing.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Since his Edgar-winning debut with Butcher's Boy (1982), Perry has inked a series of bold seriocomic thrillers (Metzger's Dog, Big Fish, Island) with ever more guffaws than grit. Here, though, he resurrects the anonymous hit-man hero of Butcher's Boy and sends him on a brawny, bloody vendetta whose rare humor is determinedly dark, even dour. In the decade since he fled to England after killing 20 mobsters in revenge for a double-cross, the ``Butcher's Boy'' has been living a life of cautious ease. One day at the races, though, he's spotted by a young American mafiosi who decides to bag the still-hunted assassin--leading to the would-be capo's instant death and soon to a pitch-black comedy of errors as the killer flies to America to settle with the mobsters he thinks are hot on his trail. A virtual juggernaut of vengeance, he lands in New York, buys a gun, and kills the young mafiosi's boss. He then jets to L.A., where, deplaning, he spots a gunman he assumes is another mafiosi- -and so he zooms on to Santa Fe and kills the head of the West Coast mob. The Butcher Boy then flies to Buffalo to buy a new I.D. but is spotted by yet another mobster, resulting in further carnage. All this gore-giddy mayhem is tethered by rich details of hit-man procedure and by flashbacks of the Butcher Boy's apprentice days, and is spun into unexpected twists by one big plot joke: The man in L.A. was not a mobster but a federal agent put on the killer's tail by his old nemesis, Justice Dept. star Elizabeth Waring. When the Butcher Boy realizes this, he decides to kill Waring--leading to lots more deaths and a tense climax that promises yet another sequel. Tough and energetic, but suffering from a moral black hole at the center: the Butcher Boy himself, a finally unsympathetic antihero whose nonstop killing makes him little more than a thinking person's Terminator. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Perry is the author of four previous novels: Island ( LJ 1/88), Big Fish ( LJ 3/15/85), The Butcher's Boy ( LJ 8/82), and Metzger's Dog ( LJ 9/15/83). His new work brings Charles Ackerman--a.k.a., the Butcher's Boy, a killing-machine-for-hire--out of retirement in England and back to the United States to silence those people he mistakenly thinks have discovered his whereabouts. The story follows Ackerman as he travels coast to coast slaughtering one crime family's head honchos. Perry's book is well written, moves rapidly, and thankfully keeps the gore minimal. But reading it is an uneasy experience--a vicious hitman is not attractive as a main character. Buy where the author's earlier works are popular. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.
- A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679410643
• ISBN 13: 9780679410645
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 337