Dead Aim

by Thomas Perry

Book Overview

"Perry succeeds with Dead Aim on all fronts. It's both chilling and absorbing, the right mix in a thriller." -New York Daily News Robert Mallon has lived for ten quiet years in affluent Santa Barbara,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400060036
• ISBN13: 9781400060030
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 366 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Dead Aim, and Spot On ... as usual.

My Holy Trinity is Thomas Perry, Sue Grafton, and Dick Francis. (And for pure charm, the Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell books.) Thomas Perry, writing his fast-paced, twisty-turny mystery books, seems never to miss the mark. I always groan when I find another one, as it means I won't get any sleep that night. It's a real problem. Dead Aim keeps driving forward. Thomas Perry is especially interesting in that in some books he goes into the psyche of some truly bad guys. And the scary thing is ... we go right along with him. This is one of those books, and both the good guy and the bad guy are, as usual, fascinating. I personally hope Thomas Perry lives to be 128, and writes until the day he drops. No mercy for Thomas Perry.

Great Escape

I almost did not buy this book because of the editorial review and glad I decided to get it anyway. As always, Perry makes this an engrossing read and a fast one. He delves into an interesting premise of doing something good by saving a life and ends up getting involved in murders and a creepy expensive self-defense training school. If you enjoy reading to escape, buy the book.

Retired rich guy gets involved

I have never read a Thomas Perry book I did not like. In this one the main character observes a young girl appearing to attempt suicide by walking into the Pacific Ocean. He saves her, gets romantically involved, then she disappears. I won't tell you what happens but the hero goes to GREAT lengths to find out. Because the encounter was very brief some have opined no one would do what the hero did, but bear in mind that a rich, retired guy with nothing to do except take walks might be looking for some excitement and boy did he find it !

Discover Perry's brilliance with this mind-blowing thriller

As we scramble to cope in a world imploding from violence, self-defense training has become as common as swimming lessons and drivers education. Women of all ages are attending classes in marital arts and increasing numbers of citizens are arming themselves and heading for shooting ranges. In Thomas Perry's fertile mind, it follows that some savvy entrepreneur might market the ultimate self-defense experience, a sort of pseudo-military resort, in which the insatiable rich can reap the practical skills to thwart potential assaults and the bragging rights to the hottest trend within their social circle. It is this camp --- The Safe-Force School of Self-Defense --- that becomes the center of the concentric ripples of violence in Perry's latest mind-blowing thriller, DEAD AIM.After the initial murder scene hits you straight between the eyes, the story switches cadence with the protagonist, Robert Mallon, rescuing a young woman from an attempted suicide on a California beach. After the intimacy of their encounter, Mallon is stunned when the young woman kills herself a few days later. Ridden with guilt because he wasn't able to dissuade her, he becomes obsessed with learning why Catherine Broward felt driven to end her life. Mallon hires Lydia Marks, a private investigator and former law enforcement colleague, to help him sort through the troubled woman's past. They soon discover Catherine had been romantically involved with a man whose unsavory alliances may have resulted in his murder --- the murder that we're witness to in the opening pages of DEAD AIM. Was Catherine running in fear of those same assassins that murdered her boyfriend? It seems like a plausible explanation, particularly when it is revealed that she spent the previous month attending an exclusive self-defense school hidden away in the hills above Santa Barbara. But the police are uninterested in reopening the case and the school's headmaster refuses to reveal information about his students, forcing Mallon and Marks to dig deeper into Catherine's puzzling life. When Mallon suddenly becomes the target for a group of unknown assassins, it appears that his benevolent intentions are unearthing a much darker secret, affirming his preliminary theory that Catherine's death may not have been a simple suicide.The fundamental storyline alone would make DEAD AIM a compelling novel, but it's Perry's originality that puts him head and shoulders above mainstream thriller writers. Not content to examine one central character from all of his or her angles, Perry probes the multiple minds of protagonists and antagonists with a precision that eliminates the usual extraneous detail and ignites the reader's speculation. Michael Parish, master of the self-defense school, is unnervingly evil and manipulative; his dedicated staff a cross-section of intelligent, highly skilled misfits. All come complete with a sufficiently murky background, a lack of moral conscience and a frightening thirst for violence. As

I am glad I am retired.....

Thomas Perry does it again. This is a great read that you will not want to put down. As the story starts, all sorts of "potential plots" come to mind. If Perry is in the process of developing new characters, he sure has a great one with Bob Mellon. The story is full of twists and turns with a surprise ending. A copy of all of Perry's books are in my small library. It is a pleasure to report the success of his latest novel. It always is a dreadful thought to consider how long it will be until his next release.