Critique du Guardian

His third novel, A Quiet Belief in Angels , was powered into the bestseller lists by Richard and Judy last year, but Ellory's new 600-page blockbuster should need no patronage to take it to even greater heights. This is an awesome achievement - a thriller of such power, scope and accomplishment that fanfares should herald its arrival. An earlier Ellory novel elegantly mixed a fascinating history of the development of the American Mafia with a sordid tale of kidnapping. The new book is a gripping account of a serial murder investigation in Washington DC, told in parallel with a history of the most squalid period in the annals of the CIA - its shocking activities in Nicaragua, financed by the smuggling of tons of cocaine into America. Detective Robert Miller has four beaten and strangled female corpses, drenched in lavender and with ribbons around their necks, who all seem to have no family, friends, history or real identities. Were they killed by the ruthless expert CIA assassin John Robey? Perhaps, but nothing is simple in this extraordinary whistle-blower. Caption: article-octthrills.1 His third novel, A Quiet Belief in Angels , was powered into the bestseller lists by Richard and Judy last year, but Ellory's new 600-page blockbuster should need no patronage to take it to even greater heights. This is an awesome achievement - a thriller of such power, scope and accomplishment that fanfares should herald its arrival. - Matthew Lewin.