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A review by usbsticky
Forty Thieves by Thomas Perry
4.0
After reading quite a few Thomas Perry books I'm beginning to get the feel for them. His books are easy to read and follow and I can get into them right away, that's why I keep reading them.
Spoilers and summary below. Don't read unless you want to know everything or unless you've read the book and want to know what other people think about it:
The plot also seems to meander a little and not go where you'd expect it to be. For example this one starts off with a husband and wife team of private investigators (the Abels) looking into the death of a chemist from a year ago. They start off by looking into his background and where he died (thrown into the sewer system). Almost immediately someone tries to take the Abels out. You would expect the book to continue with the Abels finding clues and following them up to solve the mystery like a regular PI procedural but about 40% into the book the plot abandons the Abels and follows the a husband and wife team of assassins who are hired to kill the Abels.
At some point the plot is revealed, which is that the chemist was killed because he was messing with a member of a Balkan based group of international diamond thieves. The member kills the chemist and the thieves hire a middle man who hires the assassins to kill the Abels. I have to admit this is a bit far fetched of the convolution of the thinking and because the investigation will continue anyway because the original person who hired the Abels is just going to hire other people or the cops will start looking into this new assassination. The thieves just seem plain dumb as do the assassins and many of the characters.
Anyway, the assassins decide to kill the people who hired them in order to rob them and get them off their back. The book also switches to the thieves' POV and a bit from the Abel's POV at some point. That's pretty much the plot. So as you can see, the book kind of moves all over the place.
Overall I enjoyed it because as usual everyone plays on easy mode, i.e. almost every character accomplishes their mission without a lot of problems so your mind kind of just glides on with the action.
Spoilers and summary below. Don't read unless you want to know everything or unless you've read the book and want to know what other people think about it:
The plot also seems to meander a little and not go where you'd expect it to be. For example this one starts off with a husband and wife team of private investigators (the Abels) looking into the death of a chemist from a year ago. They start off by looking into his background and where he died (thrown into the sewer system). Almost immediately someone tries to take the Abels out. You would expect the book to continue with the Abels finding clues and following them up to solve the mystery like a regular PI procedural but about 40% into the book the plot abandons the Abels and follows the a husband and wife team of assassins who are hired to kill the Abels.
At some point the plot is revealed, which is that the chemist was killed because he was messing with a member of a Balkan based group of international diamond thieves. The member kills the chemist and the thieves hire a middle man who hires the assassins to kill the Abels. I have to admit this is a bit far fetched of the convolution of the thinking and because the investigation will continue anyway because the original person who hired the Abels is just going to hire other people or the cops will start looking into this new assassination. The thieves just seem plain dumb as do the assassins and many of the characters.
Anyway, the assassins decide to kill the people who hired them in order to rob them and get them off their back. The book also switches to the thieves' POV and a bit from the Abel's POV at some point. That's pretty much the plot. So as you can see, the book kind of moves all over the place.
Overall I enjoyed it because as usual everyone plays on easy mode, i.e. almost every character accomplishes their mission without a lot of problems so your mind kind of just glides on with the action.