The Butcher’s Boy (1982) was the first novel from Thomas Perry, one of my favourite authors of late.

It’s remarkably mature and sophisticated.

 Perry won the 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel.

According to Stephen King, “there are probably only a half dozen suspense writers alive who can be depended upon to deliver high voltage shocks, vivid, sympathetic characters, and compelling narratives each time they publish. Thomas Perry is one of them.”

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The Butcher’s Boy, features as its protagonist a professional hitman …

After dispatching an innocent union member and a U.S. Senator, he arrives in Las Vegas, Nevada to pick up his fee. Instead of a payoff he finds himself on the wrong end of a murder contract.

The Butcher’s Boy seeks to collect the debt by terrorizing the Mafia – the lifelong source of his freelance jobs and current nemesis – into backing off. …

A fascinating character.

The second story line follows Elizabeth Waring, a bright young, unmarried analyst in the Justice Department, who seems mostly incompetent in trying to catch up to the killer. Her role was unimportant to me — but she appears again in the sequel ➙ Sleeping Dogs.

Sleeping Dogs (1992) is a sequel to The Butcher’s Boy, set 10 years later.

The anti-hero contract killer has left the United States and is living in England, hopefully safe from America’s organized crime,which he decimated and alienated in the first book.

He is recognized quite by accident by a minor American crime figure while at the track in Brighton, and the mobster has the bad judgement to attempt to enhance his standing by counting coup. The results are predictable. …

The whole book is a tragicomedy of errors, with the Butcher’s Boy, the mob, and various law-enforcement agencies assuming motivations and intentions on the parts of the other players that are completely erroneous, and result in much quite unnecessary mayhem. …

A Review by Barry Gardner: THOMAS PERRY – Sleeping Dogs.

The characters aren’t unreliable. Rather they quite logically guess what is happening — and are dead wrong most of the time.

It’s an original book. But not quite as good as Butcher’s Boy, in my opinion.

I will go on to the last 2 books in the series:

• The Informant (2011)
• Eddie’s Boy (2020)

Insatiable Appetites (2015) is another entertaining read in the series. Number 32. A bit more complicated than most.

Barrington Stone and his friends are at the White House to celebrate the election of pregnant (PARIS MATCH) Katherine Lee as the first female President of the United States …

Stone is stricken when his friend and mentor, Eduardo Bianchi, dies.

He was called to the old man’s bedside for some last-minute instructions on how to handle his awesome estate and to be told that one of the women in his life is really his daughter, Carla.

She is to be given an equal share of the inheritance his other offspring will receive. …

As the novel unfolds, Dolce, one of Eduardo’s daughters, is released from the nunnery she has been in for over three years due to her mental illness.

She is treated by a priest who is also a psychiatrist, and they have a long affair.

Suddenly the priest turns up mutilated. WHO is the killer?

Fast and easy to read. Nonsense entertainment.

I enjoyed this one.

The cast of our favourite characters are in Paris for the opening of the latest Arrington hotel.

… an old enemy is still in hot pursuit, but now he has the aide of a powerful man with his own ax to grind against Stone.

And back in the States, the churning rumor mill threatens to derail a project of vital importance to the entire nation. 

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Stone Barrington is getting increasingly political, advising the President of the United States.

Also, sleeping with future White House Chief of Staff. 😀

Daniel Silva is one of the best writers alive.

His 2025 book — An Inside Job — is as good as any of the rest of the Gabriel Allon series.

Art restorer and legendary spy Gabriel Allon …

But when he discovers the body of a mysterious woman floating in the waters of the Venetian Lagoon, he finds himself in a desperate race to recover a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.

The painting, a portrait of a beautiful young girl, has been gathering dust in a storeroom at the Vatican Museums for more than a century, misattributed and hidden beneath a worthless picture by an unknown artist.

Because no one knows that the Leonardo is there, no one notices when it disappears one night during a suspicious power outage.

No one but the ruthless mobsters and moneymen behind the theft—and the mysterious woman whom Gabriel found in a watery grave in Venice. A woman without a name. A woman without a face.

The action moves at breakneck speed from the galleries and auction houses of London to an enclave of unimaginable wealth on the French Riveria—and, finally, to a shocking climax in St. Peter’s Square, where the life of a pope hangs in the balance.

Gabriel Allon was in charge of Israeli intelligence. 

But now that he’s retired in Venice, recent books are more centred on Italy, art, and Catholicism.

It could be that the author doesn’t have the heart to comment on what’s happening in Israel in recent years. He had been a great defender.

Poison Flower is 7th in the excellent Jane Whitefield series.

Whitefield, a member of the Seneca nation, self-identifies as a guide, one who leads her clients — innocents, by and large — out of harm’s way. …

The book commences with Whitefield extricating a man named James Shelby from incarceration in the California Institution for Men in Chino, California.

Shelby is serving a prison sentence there for the murder of his wife, a crime he did not commit. Whitefield successfully frees Shelby in a daring and gutsy courthouse sting, but is herself captured by men masquerading as policemen.

Her captors, as it turns out, are in the employ of the man who framed Shelby to begin with. ….

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Some feel this is a weaker book in the series.

It still works for me. The biggest difference is Jane finally turns to FIGHT rather than flight.

Emily Henry is a popular young author of romance novels.

Not normally my genre. She’s more for the Reese’s Book Club crowd. 😀

But the premise of Great Big Beautiful Life (2025) intrigued.

Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life lie story of a woman who has stayed out of the public eye for decades. She’s the widow of a singer something like Elvis.

An interesting story. Plenty of romance.

Plenty of sex, as well.

I’d recommend it — even if you don’t normally read romance.

Well worth reading for those looking for hope into the future of developed nations.

Recommended.

Abundance is a nonfiction book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, published March 2025.

It feels very much up-to-date. They make many recommendations for improvement.

The authors are prominent American liberal pundits. This book evaluates progress in the USA from the left of centre point of view.

It examines the reasons behind the lack of progress on ambitious projects in the United States, including those related to affordable housing, infrastructure, and climate change.

My biggest takeaway is that governments should declare more one time EMERGENCY situations, in responding to things like natural disasters, bridge collapse, and even housing shortages. Rules and regulations make developments safer — but at too much cost. Red tape should be reduced as much as possible.

Klein and Thompson propose an Abundance Agenda that they say better manages the tradeoffs between regulations and social advancement and lament that America is stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.