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Summary
Summary
A gut-grabbing blend of seductive evil and explosive action starring the seasoned NYPD detective from Floating City and Second Skin. Ex-cop Lew Croaker confronts the moral dilemma of a lifetime when he's told he must kill a man in exchange for a compatible kidney for his desperately ill niece.
Author Notes
Eric Van Lustbader was born in Greenwich Village, New York City in 1946. He received a bachelor's degree in sociology from Columbia College in 1968. While still in college, he began work in the entertainment industry by creating his own music production company that included work with such bands as Cheap Trick, Mountain, and Blue Oyster Cult. He is a writer of both thriller and fantasy novels. He has written several series including The Pearl Saga Series, The Sunset Warrior Cycle, The China Maroc Series and The Nicholas Linnear/Ninja Cycle Series. He is also the co-author of the Jason Bourne series, starting with book 4, with Robert Ludlum.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Nicolas Linnear's sidekick, Lew Croaker (an ex-New York cop with a biomechanical hand), takes center stage in Lustbader's latest thriller (after Second Skin), which forsakes ninja action for a murky mix of murder, magic and organ thievery. Recently retired to Florida, Croaker hears from his estranged sister Matty that a drug overdose has sent her daughter Rachel into both a coma and kidney failure. After learning that there are no organs available through legal channels, Croaker is approached by a mysterious lawyer who offers him a perfectly matched kidneybut only if he kills druglord Juan Garcia Barbacena. Involved in this request are the Bonita twins, Heitor and Antonio, who wield the Guarani magic of the black stones. Also lurking about is a group of renegade agents connected to the Anti-Cartel Task Force (for whom Croaker does an odd job now and then)and therein lies the chief problem with this novel. Not content to combine mysticism with murder, Lustbader folds in enough plot for two novels, including a conflict between the Bonita twins and a government conspiracy that causes Croaker to suspect everyone he knows of betraying him. Instead of energizing the narrative, the subplots, though offering the heady violence Lustbader's fans expect, enervate it. Fewer complications would have picked up the pace, highlighted the characters and given this race-against-time the boost it needs. Author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Leaving behind the comic-strip leaps and blows of his nimble Ninjas (Floating City, 1994, etc.), Lustbader constructs an entire actioner set in the Miami area. No more worldwide crime cartels masterminded by Asians? Well, let's not get carried away. Yes, there is just such a cartel, but it's masterminded by Heitor and Antonio Bonita, a pair of bloody identical twins born bad. They run a cartel that deals in arms, drugs, white slavery, you name it, and they run it behind a line of front men who take the heat should the law intrude. One of the twins' specialties is dealing in human body organs that they harvest illegally in the States and airship to Central and South America. Scalpel-wielding Heitor likes to remove the organs while the ""donor"" is still alive. On their trail, meanwhile, is the Department of Justice. Although longtime Lustbader cop and hero Lewis Croaker has retired to captain a Miami charter boat, he's still a stringer for the Agency and carries a badge. Burned out and unwilling to be drawn back into the action, Croaker is facing a family crisis: His drug-addicted 15-year-old niece Rachel, now on dialysis, will be dead in five days if she doesn't receive a replacement kidney. Croaker sets out to find a donor. As it happens, fabulously smooth criminal lawyer Marcellus Rojas Diego Majeur offers him both a vintage turquoise Mustang and a kidney for Rachel if Croaker will just assassinate the dazzlingly vicious Juan Garcia Barbacena (he cuts off women's breasts in his lighter moments), the Bonita twins' greatest rival in terror. Croaker suddenly finds himself in a bafflingly strange and dangerous world: Nobody is what he (or she) seems, and even the Justice team Croaker reluctantly hooks up with is seemingly run by a very bad guy indeed. . . . Lustbader's intense flow of invention is wonderful to watch: Wild, gory, assured over-the-top entertainment throughout. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
In the best-selling Lustbader's latest thriller, a detective anguishes over his agreement to commit murder in exchange for a compatible kidney for his ailing niece. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
