Blood Count by Robert Goddard is a thriller in which the past catches up with surgeon Edward Hammond in an unexpected and dangerous way. Thirteen years ago, he was paid a substantial amount of money to perform a life saving operation on Dragan Gazi, a unsavoury Serbian gangster, who subsequently went on to lead his men in the slaughter of thousands during the Balkan civil wars. But now, with Gazi on trial for war crimes in The Hague, his family blackmail Edward into finding the Italian financier who knows where Gazi's many millions can be found. If Edward doesn't succeed, his ill-advised operation will be exposed and his reputation and career ruined. But Marco Piravani isn't an easy man to find, and so begins a dash across Europe that Edward hopes will give him some kind of redemption. There is so much action in this book that it can leave the reader a little breathless at times. Lots of characters, not always believable ... in fact, mostly unbelievable ... populate the pages to either place, or remove, hurdles in front of our hero - and sometimes, it seems both! There is a hint of a love interest, both regarding Edward's ex-wife and a former lover of Gazi who gave birth to his child, but it is only a hint. The real star of the book is the break-neck chase across the continent ... with Edward hot on the heels of Paravani, and then Gazi's family hot on the heels of Edward. But honestly, this is a totally bonkers plot, but told really well by the author, who has definitely mastered the art of the page-turner. So, park your logic and common sense for the duration and you cannot help but race through this ridiculous romp of a story.
My STAR rating: THREE.
Length: 336 print pages.
Price I paid: £0.50
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment