{"product_id":"9780547737430","title":"The Informant : An Otto Penzler Book","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eThe Informant\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Thomas Perry\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Perry’s novels—the best ones—are a master class in thriller writing.  The Informant should be the newest addition to that syllabus, read for  devouring first, and analysis thereafter.”—\u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  Butcher’s Boy is back. Thomas Perry’s vengeful assassin has returned to  play a deadly psychological game with Elizabeth Waring, the only  Justice Department official who ever believed he existed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  Butcher’s Boy knows Waring can help him hunt down the Mafia boss who  sent a team of hit men to kill him—and in return he offers her key  information that will help her crack an unsolved murder. So begins a new  assault on organized crime and an uneasy alliance between opposite  sides of the law. As the Butcher’s Boy works his way ever closer to his  deadly enemy in an effort to kill him first, Waring is in a desperate  struggle, either to force her unlikely ally to become a protected  informant, or to take him out of commission for good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Excellent .  . . Perry offers a compelling, rapid-fire plot, credible Mafia and FBI  secondary characters, an indictment of self-serving officialdom, and the  old soul-shattering moral dilemma: what is truth?”—\u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e  \"A book-length war of nerves that accentuates the best of Mr. Perry’s gift for using pure logic and gamesmanship to generate breathless nonstop suspense...\"The Informant\" is a marvel of tight, thoughtful construction.\"--Janet Maslin, New York Times Maybe you’ve heard of him. Named after the foster father (Eddie the Butcher) who taught him his trade, and introduced almost 30 years ago by Thomas Perry in \"The Butcher’s Boy,\" this cold-blooded professional killer is one of the immortals of the genre. Michael Schaeffer, to give his antihero his current alias, seemed a bit mechanical when he briefly came out of retirement two decades ago in \"Sleeping Dogs,\" but he makes a great comeback in THE INFORMANT (Otto Penzler\/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27) – older wiser and deadlier. Perry has to exert himself to engineer a reunion between Schaeffer, who has surfaced from anonymity to defend himself from the mafia good squads that have taken a sudden interest in him, and Elizabeth Waring, a hyper-vigilant honcho with the Department of Justice whose fondest desire is to turn Schaeffer into a government informant. But once these uneasy civilities are attended to, the Butcher’s Boy is free to kill again, in his own distinctly cruel and inventive way. The fun thing about his professional methods is how low-tech they are. That’s poetic justice for a target like Frank Tosca, an old-school underboss who has called an extraordinary meeting in Arizona to convince the fractious leaders of the big crime families that he can revitalize the mafia and lead it into a new golden age. While everyone is on high alert for marauders brandishing advanced weapons of war, the Butcher’s Boy quietly sneaks into Tosca’s cabin and slits his throat with a hunting knife he picked up at a sporting-goods store. Perry’s immaculate style – clean, polished, uncluttered by messy emotions – suits the Butcher’s Boy, who executes his kills with the same cool, dispassionate skill. But this time there’s something almost human about his awareness of the limitations imposed by his aging body. Luckily, one of the lessons he learned from Eddie is that \"killing was mostly a mental business. It required thinking clearly, not quickly.\" And his mind is still sharp enough to devise the kind of ingenious logistical traps a young computer gamer could only dream of.--Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review. \"Edgar-winner Perry's excellent third Butcher's Boy novel (after Sleeping Dogs) pits the Butcher's Boy (aka Michael Schaeffer), an impeccably effective hit man, against his old nemesis, Elizabeth Waring, an impeccably honest Justice Department official. Though Waring's boss, arrogant political appointee Dale Hunsecker, tries to hamstring her, Waring wants to bolster her 20-year pursuit of Mafia bosses by turning the Butcher's Boy into America's most important informant. Waring soon enters into an intricate pas de deux with a man who considers death a buy-sell commodity. Meanwhile, this icy yet strangely appealing killer, who reads Waring as well as she reads him, methodically murders capo after capo and their \"made men\" across the country, the only way he can safely return to his quiet retirement in England with his beloved wife, Meg. Perry offers a compelling, rapid-fire plot, credible Mafia and FBI secondary characters, an indictment of self-serving officialdom, and the old soul-shattering moral dilemma: what is truth? (May)\"\u003cstrong\u003e --Publishers Weekly, STARRED review\u003c\/strong\u003e \"Twenty years after a trio of lowlifes forced him out of retirement (\u003cem\u003eSleeping Dogs\u003c\/em\u003e, 1992, etc.), the Butcher’s Boy is back. When you’re a professional killer who works freelance, your employers are likely to include a large number of nasty guys. So it’s not clear to Perry’s nameless hero, who started calling himself Michael Schaeffer when he moved to England and settled\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780547737430\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Harper Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":41168218554574,"sku":"9780547737430","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/9780547737430.jpg?v=1651824372","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780547737430","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}