British Intelligence ensures that before Antonio Lemuel Ernest Sebastian Stanhope-Swift, a terminally ill criminal mastermind, can see his daughter, he must first assassinate a well-known murderer, traitor, and defector--his father
Reginald Charles Hill was a contemporary English crime writer, and the winner in 1995 of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
After National Service (1955-57) and studying English at St Catherine's College, Oxford University (1957-60) he worked as a teacher for many years, rising to Senior Lecturer at Doncaster College of Education. In 1980 he retired from salaried work in order to devote himself full-time to writing.
Hill is best known for his more than 20 novels featuring the Yorkshire detectives Andrew Dalziel, Peter Pascoe and Edgar Wield. He has also written more than 30 other novels, including five featuring Joe Sixsmith, a black machine operator turned private detective in a fictional Luton. Novels originally published under the pseudonyms of Patrick Ruell, Dick Morland, and Charles Underhill have now appeared under his own name. Hill is also a writer of short stories, and ghost tales.
Disappointment Reginald Hill has been my favorite author - but this novel was so full.of violence and bloodshed that it is my least liked book EVER. There are too many characters to keep straight who was doing what to whom. I almost stopped reading it after "Bucko" 's father, now handless, drowned. The ending, finally stress-free, however, did satisfy. I think I may have one more Hill book on my Kindle But will not start reading it until I've recovered from this one.
3.5 A fast read. Not very likable at first, but it did get more and more enjoyable after the first 100 or so pages. And surprisingly, very funny toward the end.
A fugitive Brit living in South America has been told that he has only a few months to live. He fakes his death and returns to England to see his daughter. His father is a defector now living in Moscow.