Butcher's Boy
4 primary works
Book 1
Thomas Perry exploded onto the literary scene with The Butcher’s Boy. Back in print by popular demand, this spectacular debut, from a writer of “infernal ingenuity” (The New York Times Book Review), includes a new Introduction by bestselling author Michael Connelly.
Murder has always been easy for the Butcher’s Boy—it’s what he was raised to do. But when he kills the senior senator from Colorado and arrives in Las Vegas to pick up his fee, he learns that he has become a liability to his shadowy employers. His actions attract the attention of police specialists who watch the world of organized crime, but though everyone knows that something big is going on, only Elizabeth Waring, a bright young analyst in the Justice Department, works her way closer to the truth, and to the frightening man behind it.
Praise for The Butcher’s Boy
“A stunning debut . . . a brilliantly plotted thriller.”—The Washington Post
“A shrewdly planned and executed thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Thomas Perry has hit the mark.”—Houston Chronicle
“Totally enthralling.”—The New Yorker
Book 2
Now, after a decade, they've found him. The Butcher's Boy escapes back to the States with more reasons to kill. Until the odds turn terrifyingly against him . . . until the Mafia, the cops, the FBI, and the damn Justice Department want his hide . . . until he's locked into a cross-country odyssey of fear and death that could tear his world to pieces . . .
"Exciting . . . Suspenseful . . . A thriller's job is to make you turn the pages until the story's done and your eyes hurt and the clock says 3 a.m. . . . I wouldn't try to grab this one away from somebody only half-way through. No telling what might happen."
-- Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
Book 3
The 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.
The 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.
"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?"--Publishers Weekly
Book 4
Eddie's Boy jumps between Michael's current predicament and the past, between the skillset he now ruthlessly and successfully employs and the training that made him what he is. We glimpse the days before he became the Butcher's Boy, the highly skilled hit man who pulled a slaughter job on some double-crossing clients and started a mob war, to his childhood spent apprenticed to Eddie, a seasoned hired assassin. And we watch him pit two prominent mafia families against each other to eliminate his enemies one by one.
He's meticulous in his approach, using an old contact turned adversary in the Organized Crime Division of the Justice Department for information, without ever allowing her to get too close to his trail. But will he be able to escape this new wave of young contract killers, or will the years finally catch up to him?
Perry's Edgar Award-winning Butcher's Boy returns in full force in this exhilarating new installment to the beloved series.