A Simple Act of Violence (Paperback)

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A Quiet Vendetta by R.J. Ellory 4.8 out of 5 stars (29)  £5.99

City Of Lies by R.J. Ellory 4.7 out of 5 stars (26)  £6.39

Ghostheart by R.J. Ellory 4.6 out of 5 stars (26)  £5.99

Candlemoth by Roger Jon Ellory 4.6 out of 5 stars (39)  £5.99

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory 4.3 out of 5 stars (294)  £4.99

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Review
'An awesome achievement - a thriller of such power, scope and accomplishment that fanfares should herald its arrival' (GUARDIAN (01.11.08) )

'Dramas gratifyingly evoked by Ellory's perfect portrayal of a city held captive by a serial killer. So skilful is his use of dialogue and the Washington location, in a thriller that propels the reader along and offers shocks and suspense in equal measure, that one never doubts the authenticity of his American credentials... At 500 pages, this is a long, substantial novel. Yet had it been twice as long this reviewer would still have wanted more.' (WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY )

'A Simple Act of Violence is an expose of the brutality of covert operations, the power of greed and the insidious nature of corruption. It is also a story of love and trust that somehow managed to survive the very worst that the world could throw at it.' (DEADLY PLEASURES (Oct 08) )

'Ellory brings a new psychological and moral tension to the genre, mixing Washington politics with serial killings.' (SAGA (Oct 08) )

'A 600-page blockbuster that twists two stories together into a real headache for harrassed homicide detective Robert Miller, and it confirms Elloy's breakthrough book, A Quiet Belief in Angels, was no fluke. 9/10' (PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH (11 Oct) )

'A fast-paced and wonderfully constucted plot' (NEWS LETTER (N Ireland) (17 Oct) )

'This is a book with everything that a fan of modern mystery fiction could hope for; a labyrinthine plot, unbearable tension, controversy and a social conscience.' (CRIMESQUAD )

'An ambitious and gripping novel... shot through with a fierce and informed political anger.' (MORNING STAR )

'As always with Ellory, the canvas is vast and ambitious, with the various human emotions at the centre of the narrative writ large.' (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )

'Ellory exposes the cynicism, greed and brutality beneath the world of covert operations and high-octane politics... This 500-pare generally delivers a lot of bang for your buck... Fascinating.' (IRISH EXAMINER )

Product Description
Washington, embroiled in the mid-term elections, did not want to hear about serial killings. But when the newspapers reported a fourth murder, when they gave the killer a name and details of his horrendous crimes, there were few people that could ignore it. Detective Robert Miller is assigned to the case. He and his partner begin the task of correlating and cross-referencing the details of each crime scene. Rapidly things begin to complicate. The victims do not officially exist. Their personal details do not register on any known systems. The harder Miller works, the less it makes sense. And as Miller unearths ever more disturbing facts, he starts to face truths so far-removed from his own reality that he begins to fear for his life. This is a novel about trust, loyalty, and beliefs that are so ingrained which, when challenged, they leave people with nothing. Vast in scope, A SIMPLE ACT OF VIOLENCE is an expose of the brutality of covert operations, the power of greed and the insidious nature of corruption. It is also a story of love and trust that somehow managed to survive the very worst that the world could throw at it.

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40 Reviews 5 star:  (31) 4 star:  (1) 3 star:  (4) 2 star:  (1) 1 star:  (3)           Average Customer Review 4.4 out of 5 stars (40 customer reviews)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   4 of 4 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars Another knockout read from Ellory, 10 Feb 2009 By  Rizla (Surrey, England) - See all my reviews In some ways, this book is even more enjoyable than this author's best-known work A Quiet Belief in Angels, because here he achieves the hugely impressive feat of a sympathetic killer. I found this novel to be extremely well-researched and consequently scarily credible as well as informative. It is ingeniously plotted and the hero is bound to hit just the right note with readers. Let's hope we see Detective Miller in future works by RJ Ellory. Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   17 of 23 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars The Sacred Monster and its heart of darkness, 10 Oct 2008 By  OEJ (England) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)       This review is from: A Simple Act of Violence (Hardcover) The story starts off with the brutal murder of a woman in her Washington DC home and soon develops into a serial killer investigation. In the dust-jacket summary it states that "Detective Robert Miller is assigned to the case". Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I thought, almost a parody of countless crime fiction thrillers, and I felt that among other things the author had once again made the decision to write in a particular style that would be as different as possible from the five novels that preceded it. There's nothing corny or stereotypical about the narrative or dialogue itself, I hasten to add; Ellory is an exceptionally talented story-teller with this unusual capacity to select a particular style and stick with it so as to give that specific novel an identity of its own such that it stands apart from the story itself. He has succeeded, yet again. Having said that, there is a small but significant reminder in its concept that reminds me of his third novel A QUIET VENDETTA, that being the development of a relationship between the leading character and his nemesis. This time around, it isn't a case of the hunted telling his life story to his hunter, rather it emerges that the hunter finds himself being manipulated if not directed by his key suspect such that every step of his investigation seems to have been orchestrated and controlled. It is in every sense a suspense thriller, a tale in which the detective pursues endless leads and forensic trails only to find that every single one leads to nothing. Dead people have names, addresses, jobs and bank accounts but little evidence that they ever existed. Potential witnesses vanish without trace. Life histories appear to be utterly fabricated. It's a painful pleasure to share the maddening emotions that Detective Miller has to endure throughout this case, which unusually for Ellory is spread over a very short period, just over a week in fact. Inevitably however there is some looking back into the past, and not for the first time in this writer's portfolio, some attempts are made to expose the hypocrisies of America's political landmarks. I was reminded of vaguely similar efforts by the legendary James Ellroy and his epics AMERICAN TABLOID and its sequel THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, which attempted to seduce readers into thinking that the facts behind such events as presidential assassinations and American involvement in various conflicts - some of its own making - were not in any way accurately reported in the media. So we have another feast for conspiracy lovers, but it was a touch disappointing to see that despite the time-stamp of 2006 there was almost no mention at all of the invasion of Iraq three years earlier. In fairness that conspiracy would appear to be motivated by a different kind of agenda to this one, so perhaps we can look forward to another day when Ellory will tailor a story to something more contemporary than this one, which took place in the Reagan administered years of the 1980s. Where this novel excels is in its relentless capacity to build up tension and suspense. With 100 pages to go, I could not imagine an ending that could contain the explosive revelations, even though the reader has a rather better idea of what's going on than the unfortunate Detective Miller. Instead of vivid imagery and in-depth characterisation, just two skills that Ellory has demonstrated more than ably in the past, here he focuses on mystery, confusion and conspiracy. Some might argue that it is too far-fetched, that the historical events mentioned were not the work of some covert world-controlling agency, but then few if any of us have the evidence to prove otherwise. In any case, I don't buy novels such as this to shoot them down or try to out-guess the objectives or the reasons behind what's going on; I buy them to be entertained, to take myself away from the pretty grim and unattractive 'real world' that many of us are living in at the moment, and in this respect A Simple Act of Violence does exactly what I wanted it do, to provide some sense of escapism that isn't fantasy; it's about people and events that might just be as frighteningly real as they are portrayed here. Unlike the highly visual prose of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS this novel delivers a different but equally vivid kind of punch that manages to draw on different emotions by different means, and is perhaps the best demonstration yet of Ellory's versatility and literary evolution. So it's a maximum 5 stars once again, Ellory remaining the only author whose works I have read to get top marks from me for each and every novel published. Each of his novels is difficult to compare with any of his others because they are all so different, and as a writer I think he stands tall among all of his peers. Comment Comment (1) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)   16 of 22 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars The Sacred Monster and its heart of darkness, 10 Oct 2008 By  OEJ (England) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)       If this is your first foray into the writings of R J Ellory, you will miss the subtle joke that he's playing on the reader. For several of the early pages I couldn't stop smiling, and I can imagine him smiling broadly himself as he composed his words. Not that there's anything remotely funny about the subject matter, which starts off with the brutal murder of a woman in her Washington DC home and which soon develops into a serial killer investigation. What gave the secret away were the words in the dust jacket : "Detective Robert Miller is assigned to the case". So wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, so deliberately stereotypical of countless crime fiction thrillers, that I knew that among other things, the author had once again made the decision to write in a particular style that would be as different as possible from the five novels that preceded it, which incidentally are all very different from one another too. There's nothing corny or stereotypical about the narrative or dialogue itself, I hasten to add; Ellory is an exceptionally talented story-teller with this unusual capacity to select a particular style and stick with it so as to give that specific novel an identity of its own such that it stands apart from the story itself. He has succeeded, yet again. Having said that, there is a small but significant element of its concept that reminds me of his third novel A QUIET VENDETTA, that being the development of a relationship between the leading character and his nemesis. This time around, it isn't a case of the hunted telling his life story to his hunter, rather it emerges that the hunter finds himself being manipulated if not directed by his key suspect such that every step of his investigation seems to have been orchestrated and controlled. It is in every sense a suspense thriller, a tale in which the detective pursues endless leads and forensic trails only to find that every single one leads to nothing. Dead people have names, addresses, jobs and bank accounts but little evidence that they ever existed. Potential witnesses vanish without trace. Life histories appear to be utterly fabricated. It's a painful pleasure to share the maddening emotions that Detective Miller has to endure throughout this case, which unusually for Ellory is spread over a very short period, just over a week in fact. Inevitably however there is some looking back into the past, and not for the first time in this writer's portfolio, some attempts are made to expose the hypocrisies of America's political landmarks. I was reminded of vaguely similar efforts by the legendary James Ellroy and his epics AMERICAN TABLOID and its sequel THE COLD SIX THOUSAND, which attempted to seduce readers into thinking that the facts behind such events as presidential assassinations and American involvement in various conflicts - some of its own making - were not in any way accurately reported in the media. So we have another feast for conspiracy lovers, but it was a touch disappointing to see that despite the time-stamp of 2006 there was almost no mention at all of the invasion of Iraq three years earlier. In fairness that conspiracy would appear to be motivated by a different kind of agenda to this one, so perhaps we can look forward to another day when Ellory will tailor a story to something more contemporary than this one, which took place in the Reagan administered years of the 1980s. Where this novel excels is in its relentless capacity to build up tension and suspense. With 100 pages to go, I could not imagine an ending that could contain the explosive revelations, even though the reader has a rather better idea of what's going on than the unfortunate Detective Miller. Instead of vivid imagery and in-depth characterisation, just two skills that Ellory has demonstrated more than ably in the past, here he focuses on mystery, confusion and conspiracy. Some might argue that it is too far-fetched, that the historical events mentioned were not the work of some covert world-controlling agency, but then few if any of us have the evidence to prove otherwise. In any case, I don't buy novels such as this to shoot them down or try to out-guess the objectives or the reasons behind what's going on; I buy them to be entertained, to take myself away from the pretty grim and unattractive 'real world' that many of us are living in at the moment, and in this respect A Simple Act of Violence does exactly what I wanted it do, to provide some sense of escapism that isn't fantasy; it's about people and events that might just be as frighteningly real as they are portrayed here. Unlike the highly visual prose of A QUIET BELIEF IN ANGELS this novel delivers a different but equally vivid kind of punch that manages to draw on different emotions by different means, and is perhaps the best demonstration yet of Ellory's versatility and literary evolution. So it's a maximum 5 stars once again, Ellory remaining the only author whose works I have read to get top marks from me for each and every novel published. Each of his novels is difficult to compare with any of his others because they are all so different, and as a writer I think he stands tall among all of his peers. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all 40 customer reviews...		Most Recent Customer Reviews 1.0 out of 5 stars boring and too long I am definately with the minority about my feelings for this book but I'm going to leave my review anyway. I got half way through and realised that nothing had happened. Read more Published 1 month ago by Ms. Nadine L. Doyle 5.0 out of 5 stars What a discovery After reading "A Simple Act Of Violence" i went out & bought all of Ellory's back catalogue. Every book hits the spot. The new king of crime fiction. Published 1 month ago by L. Simmonds 5.0 out of 5 stars Want to read it all over again..... Fabulous read. Well-researched. Far-fetched but in that way in which you hope to hell it is far-fetched and not really believable and yet - you know it is. Read more Published 1 month ago by Cupcake Queen 5.0 out of 5 stars Another gem I have read all of Mr Ellory's books and it would be difficult to say one of them was the best as they are all very different, though with the same great quality of writing - and... Read more Published 1 month ago by M. A. Smith 4.0 out of 5 stars A good aul' crime thriller I'm about 3/4 way through this at the moment & I quite like it. To me, it's very similar to Quiet Vendetta (which I loved) in terms of the characters & basic plot line. Read more Published 2 months ago by Mink 1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written Couldn't finish the book...writing too flabby for me. Over-use of the word "seemed" and lazy descriptions - one character was described as looking like William Hurt! Published 3 months ago by Chris Booth 3.0 out of 5 stars Left feeling disappointed I love R.J Ellorys books, I like a lot of people discovered A Quiet Belief In Angels after Richard and Judy picked it as one of their book choices. Read more Published 4 months ago by Bakey 5.0 out of 5 stars a definite eye opener .... absolutely great stuff!! Another extremely astute piece of work. For an author to affect me and rouse my dissentient self whilst simultaneously inspiriting me the way it... Read more Published 4 months ago by Ms. V. A. Hallam 5.0 out of 5 stars A simple act of Brilliance It must be daunting for an author to follow up a book which garnered such praise as A quiet belief in Angels did and it takes a special writer to have the courage to follow the... Read more Published 5 months ago by Brian Moore 5.0 out of 5 stars Another winner! "For now...... world permitted to believe... a simple act of violence." What a perfect conclusion! I am bereft now that I have finished it.. Read more Published 5 months ago by E. Ahern Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews › See all 40 customer reviews...

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