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Payback
After Detective Mary Conner is gunned down, Detective Rick Lafferty defies orders to stand down and makes it his mission to hunt down the dirty cop who shot the woman he's come to love.
Joleen Wilson wants the cop dead for reasons of her own and Darcy Brown wants revenge on the city's biggest drug dealer.
Will they all get what they want or die in the attempt?
Joleen Wilson wants the cop dead for reasons of her own and Darcy Brown wants revenge on the city's biggest drug dealer.
Will they all get what they want or die in the attempt?
351 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 24, 2022
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 10, 2023
This book just may be better than the first! It is an absolutely thrilling story about the best and worst in the organization sworn to protect all citizens. The characters keep you invested as you either love or loathe them and the action and drama keeps the pages turning. I really enjoyed this story and highly recommend it!
December 19, 2022
Intriguing Couldn't Put Down
Once again Freas delivers. Story pulled me in halfway through Chapter One and kept me engaged until I finished the book. Multitude of characters and twists and turns kept my brain engaged. A must read if you like a mix of crime and passion.
Once again Freas delivers. Story pulled me in halfway through Chapter One and kept me engaged until I finished the book. Multitude of characters and twists and turns kept my brain engaged. A must read if you like a mix of crime and passion.
November 16, 2022
I haven't enjoyed a book this much in months. The characters are
interesting and the plot moves along quickly with enough complexity
to keep you reading and reading to learn how things will go.
interesting and the plot moves along quickly with enough complexity
to keep you reading and reading to learn how things will go.
November 30, 2022
If you like cozy mysteries, this ain’t one. This is a noir, cop/action fiction that is not a mystery per say, as readers know who the villains are and turn the pages to find out when the hell the abominable culprits are going to be caught. As these are killers, rapists, and cops themselves.
There is suspense in Payback, almost at every page, and plenty of muscle on the side of good and bad cops. I don’t remember many characters with bold heads or pot bellies in this novel where everyone seems well-built. So this novel should attract the readership of men between 20 and 50, although, to tell the truth, one of my female friends loves spy/action novels with plenty of sex, also targeted to masculine readership.
Me, I like psychological mysteries and thrillers. Give me P.D. James, Elizabeth George or Lisa Jewel, and I am a happy gal.
And yet, I enjoyed this fast-paced one. Although I would have wished for more descriptions, the slang and colloquialism, the quick dialogues, add colorfulness and realism. Spiced with danger, it creates a dark, nearly claustrophobic atmosphere from where the good, the bad, or the reader is not sure he’s going to get out. Freas holds his minimalistic sentences quite well as he keeps the reader gripped in the shady world that he builds sentence after sentence.
The main theme of the novel, cops’ corruption, cops who work for the mafia, wipes out the line between the good, the bad, and the so-so. Even “good” cops use “fixers.” Fixers are other cops hired in emergency. They will erase evidence of their colleagues who have killed accidentally or committed any crime that would prevent, say, a promotion. One of these fixers works both for police, and for a drug dealing and prostitution mafia, and is here the main, love to hate, villain in the novel, a villain that gives Payback its gloomy pulse. I was almost hoping for him to just disappear into the night for a while, to keep readers waiting for his return. And I would have preferred his mafia boss without a face, surviving too as an evil presence coming back and fought again in the next Freas novel.
Written as it is, the novel could be easily adapted for a cop flick or an episode of Law and Order. Although I would have preferred more detailing of Philadelphia where the action takes place, I can say this is a damn good book which I recommend without hesitation.
11.30.2022
There is suspense in Payback, almost at every page, and plenty of muscle on the side of good and bad cops. I don’t remember many characters with bold heads or pot bellies in this novel where everyone seems well-built. So this novel should attract the readership of men between 20 and 50, although, to tell the truth, one of my female friends loves spy/action novels with plenty of sex, also targeted to masculine readership.
Me, I like psychological mysteries and thrillers. Give me P.D. James, Elizabeth George or Lisa Jewel, and I am a happy gal.
And yet, I enjoyed this fast-paced one. Although I would have wished for more descriptions, the slang and colloquialism, the quick dialogues, add colorfulness and realism. Spiced with danger, it creates a dark, nearly claustrophobic atmosphere from where the good, the bad, or the reader is not sure he’s going to get out. Freas holds his minimalistic sentences quite well as he keeps the reader gripped in the shady world that he builds sentence after sentence.
The main theme of the novel, cops’ corruption, cops who work for the mafia, wipes out the line between the good, the bad, and the so-so. Even “good” cops use “fixers.” Fixers are other cops hired in emergency. They will erase evidence of their colleagues who have killed accidentally or committed any crime that would prevent, say, a promotion. One of these fixers works both for police, and for a drug dealing and prostitution mafia, and is here the main, love to hate, villain in the novel, a villain that gives Payback its gloomy pulse. I was almost hoping for him to just disappear into the night for a while, to keep readers waiting for his return. And I would have preferred his mafia boss without a face, surviving too as an evil presence coming back and fought again in the next Freas novel.
Written as it is, the novel could be easily adapted for a cop flick or an episode of Law and Order. Although I would have preferred more detailing of Philadelphia where the action takes place, I can say this is a damn good book which I recommend without hesitation.
11.30.2022
May 9, 2023
Every page from the very beginning is filled with action ,not a book to sit around collecting dust. I wanted so many times to reach through the pages and strangle the bad guys i wanted to scream & rant ! Looking forward to more action packed books from David Freas !
January 19, 2024
I am biased as all get out about this book for obvious reasons.
But I love it. A great story well told.
But I love it. A great story well told.
August 9, 2024
A real page-turner. I began it thinking I might get 50 pages in before bed. When I finally set it down, I was nearly 200 pages in. Great book, all the way to the end. Looking for more by this author!
For fans of Kellerman or McBain (dating myself!) this is a great action-thriller.
For fans of Kellerman or McBain (dating myself!) this is a great action-thriller.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews