Amazon.co.uk Review
Aphrodite, in Russell Andrews' new switchback of a thriller, is a secret over which people will kill and kill again. The book starts with a string of deaths--a Washington intern who is having an affair, a philosopher specialising in social ethics, and a reporter who started checking up on some mistakes she made in a movie star's obituary--that seem to have nothing whatsoever in common. Westwood, the cop who finds himself investigating the dead journalist, really wants it to be an accident--he has things in his past that make him not want ever again to be a serious policeman--but he finds clues, and then he finds a witness--the dead woman's yoga-instructor. At that point, his troubles really begin.
Andrews is fascinating when writing about the secret so important that people have to die for it, but the real interest of the book is in Westwood and the process whereby he stretches, and starts using again, an intellect, a physical toughness and a capacity for ruthlessness with which he really thought he was done for good. The mystery is inventive enough--but Andrews makes us care about his hero and the woman he finds himself protecting. --Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Description
Justin Westwood has retreated from reality by taking a menial post with the police department in Long Island. Mindless traffic duty and a lot of booze stop him reliving the past, but his dormant professionalism is reluctantly awakened when he realises that the death of a young journalist is deliberate not accidental. As he retraces the woman's movements in the hours before her death he learns she's been in trouble for quoting some erroneous facts in an obituary of a man who had been living in the local old people's home. Not the sort of mistake which normally brings a duo of professional hitmen to the door of a fallible reporter, and certainly not one which brings the FBI into town. As he attempts to unravel the puzzle he finds someone is a step ahead of him, disposing of witnesses and setting him up for the rap. Realising he has to face real life at its starkest if he is to survive, he goes solo - though if he'd known what was in store he'd have stuck to handing out parking tickets. A thriller of such tension and action that it should come with its own oxygen supply.
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