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| City of Lies | 
 enlarge | Author: R.j. Ellory
Publisher: Orion
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy New: £0.85
You Save: £7.14 (89%)
New (33) from £0.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 45001
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 464
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0752880896
EAN: 9780752880891
ASIN: 0752880896
Publication Date: July 5, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 This is no 'Quiet belief in angels' September 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am sorry to disagree with the other reviewers, but I was really disappointed with this book. I absolutely loved Quiet Belief in Angels and could not recommend it nearly enough. I therefore thought that this book would be another triumph but that was not the case. I found this book unbelievable and written in a very irritating style - so much so that I didn't even finish it. While the tone of 'Quiet Belief' was perfectly pitched, I can only think that Ellory watched too much Sopranos before embarking on this and he doesn't quite hit the mark.
Weak, compared to his other titles September 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I've devoured two other novels by Ellory over the past couple of months, but this was a disappointment. The big problem lies in the characterisation, or lack of it. We have cardboard gangsters, complete with Moll, but the biggest problem lies with the central character, John Harper: surely one of the most uninteresting 'heroes' ever created. He was like a vacuum at the centre of the book and I couldn't have cared less what happened to him.
 Move over Puzo July 28, 2008
In City of Lies, R J Ellory takes that tried and tested device of placing the ordinary guy in an extraordinary situation...and gives it a Godfather makeover. The ordinary Joe in question is John Harper; one-time novelist, full-time journalist whose byline should read Meaningless in Miami.
Then one day, John receives a call from his aunt in New York; an aunt who took him in as a child when he was orphaned. The reason? The father he thought he died thirty years ago has just been shot and is lying in a coma in hospital.
As the past and its terrible events crowds in on John the big questions are: who exactly is his father? Why has his aunt lied to him all these years? John soon meets an old family friend, Walt, his mysterious, blonde colleague and a driven, Marilyn Munroe obsessed detective and as the story gathers momentum and Harper searches for the truth, R J Ellory uses his cast of characters with consummate skill to weave a web of truths, half-truths and lies.
Ellory is a man with an eye for a beautiful sentence and the skill to build a well-crafted plot with cast of characters that will have this book glued to your hands until you reach the hugely satisfying conclusion.
This guy is good July 17, 2008
This is the second book of RJE that I have read. This one was not as dark as "A quiet belief in Angels", and so may be easier for others to get into. These books cannot be categorised as thrillers but they have the pace of one. The characters are extremely well thoughtout and the storyline is strong. For an englishman writing about crime in America this guy is brilliant.
There was one fault - the first two or three pages seemed heavy and made me wonder if the book would be good. If you find that the same when you pick it up - persist - it not only gets better it excels.
66 Carmine July 6, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
Before finishing Ellory's beautiful A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS I decided to buy everything else he has written, and CITY OF LIES is the first I found, although it is actually his fourth novel. I much prefer the author's original title '66 Carmine' as it evokes thoughts of a more appropriately noir-ish atmosphere than the rather bland title the publishers preferred and more accurately reflects one of the key elements of the story, which is to say this house is where it all began some three decades earlier and where it ultimately ends. It has to be said that the writing style is so completely different from AQBIA that the reader might wonder if they were both penned by the same man, but there is one thread that both novels have in common: the central character in each case will become a writer, in fact the key man here has already had a book published in years past which is often referred to in dialogue. That man is 36-year-old John Harper, who has lived an unassuming life in Miami unaware that the father he thought had died when he was a boy is in reality one of the most powerful financiers of organised crime in New York. It's only when the elderly boss-of-bosses is shot and critically injured that Harper is brought in to act on behalf of the father he never knew so as to bring about the big deal that is designed to hand over power and territory to another leading underworld kingpin. This is a riveting, powerful character-driven tale of life-long deception and power pursuits. Spread over just ten days or so the bulk of the story is built upon the lead up to a climax on a specific date, Christmas Eve, and much of the final 100 pages are dedicated to a minute-by-minute account of several simultaneous bank heists on that day. If this was to be turned into a film, I would suggest that Michael Mann would be the right man to direct it. Despite intense and intimate debate about what went on all those years ago and what will happen when everything comes to a head in a few days' time, I could not think what the outcome would be as it seemed, in its specific detail, to be utterly unpredictable. The confusion and distraction that Harper and others suffer is felt by the reader too, I for one feeling totally engrossed in the people, the history and the events, and sensing real tension and danger in the concluding stages. This is a crime thriller with genuine depth and breadth and one that on several occasions manages to move, excite and surprise the reader. The bank heists are pure theatre, vividly cinematic and thoroughly gripping. Once you're in, you won't want to put it down until the very end. Strongly recommended - RJ Ellory has to be one of Britain's best and yet still most promising literary talents.
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