Wednesday 19 February 2014

DAN O'SHEA - GREED


Synopsis/blurb.........

The Second Detective John Lynch Chicago Thriller

A taut US urban thriller by Chicago’s answer to Dennis Lehane. For fans of Lehane, C. J. Box & Jeffery Deaver.

Ex-Marine, Nick Hardin, heads back from a decade in Africa to his hometown, Chicago, with $100 million in blood diamonds stolen from an Al Qaeda’s financing pipeline. His retirement plan? To cash out through a Chicago Mossad contact and head for the beach.

But soon, Hardin’s stuck in Chicago with diamonds he can’t sell and a series of hit men, mobsters, and a Washington off-the-books black ops team on his tail.

The resulting body count leaves Chicago detective John Lynch trying to find connections among the victims, while simultaneously solving the murder of a dead infectious disease expert who’d drafted a biological weapons plan that could turn Chicago into a ghost town.

Dan O’Shea is one of my finds of the year so far. (Ok, it was late 2013 when he appeared on my radar – if we’re being picky.) Last month his debut novel, Penance scooped the much coveted, supreme accolade of Col’s Criminal Library January book of the month. This month his follow-up, Greed smacks it out of the park again and is a contender for February. Fortunately I still have his short story collection Old School to look forward to.

My Penance thoughts are here.

We are re-introduced to Detective Lynch and his partner, Slo-Mo Bernstein as well as a whole new cast of intriguing characters this time. I’ll give up on reviewing this thing coherently, because if I was to wax lyrical about every facet of this superb multi-layered crime marvel, I would be here for a month of Sundays and still wouldn’t be able to do it justice.

In the space of 410-odd pages we have tech-wiz surveillance, diamonds, WMDs, hit-men, Mexican drug lords and cartels, Chicago gang-bangers, Hollywood actors, Mob bosses and flunkies, hookers, FBI, DEA, Mossad, Al-Qaeda, local cops, ex-marines, Scottish nearly-nuns, Washington-black op types, Hezbollah, the Foreign Legion, financiers, Oprah, Liberia, Africa, Lebanon, Iran, Vietnam, France, Israel, family, death, loss, refuge, robbery, shootings, revenge, identity, retirement plans...........and a whole plethora of things I have forgotten.

If you were to sit me down and pin me to the chair and force me to re-read this straight away, I’d thank you. Not a dull sentence, paragraph, page or chapter in sight.

O’Shea deserves to reach a wide audience with this book, which was recently released by Exhibit A books. Up top in the blurb he is compared to Lehane, Box and Deaver, but having read two of the three, I’d disagree – he’s better!

6 from 5


Accessed via Net Galley.

12 comments:

  1. Col - I'm so glad you enjoyed this one that much. I always think it's so nice to find a book like that - a book that one would cheerfully re-read a number of times. And it certainly sounds as though this one has a lot of plot points and themes. Thanks for sharing.

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    1. Margot thanks. Definitely a new favourite author of mine. Multiple plot strands and likeable characters, all presented believably. Happy days!

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  2. Well you did do a good job on selling Penance when you read it... I guess I'll try that one first. But I do like it when you do the features of a book in list form, I reckon you could make anything sound exciting. I'd like to see your list for the Bible....

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    1. Moira thanks - you're excused for now, but hopefully you take the plunge on the first. I wonder whether listing is the art of a lazy reviewer - but I like to just touch on things as opposed to reveal to much detail.
      Now the bible.....hmm not read that one for a few years, remind me.....

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  3. Well, you've put him on my radar. Hope to read him this year. His first book is on sale for $1.99. Can't beat that. Thanks!

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    1. No problem - fingers crossed it works out for you as well as Virgil Tibbs did for me!

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  4. Col, those 400-odd pages pack a lot, all good reasons for me to read this book. I have heard and read much about Dan O'Shea.

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    1. Prashant, I can't sing its praises enough TBH. Just a really intelligent book, with a great deal going on. I loved his analysis of how certain events could be spun and would be spun in the States by the black op dudes and how theY constantly re-assess and manipulate and massage and control things - brilliant IMO.

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  5. I will keep an eye out for Penance. I will put it on the book sale list, it may show up there. And if not, I will seek it out. Unless Glen beats me to it.

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    1. It would be good to see you and/or Glen read one or both of these. It's a very busy book - both are actually, but brilliant.

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  6. Col, thanks for the kind words about both PENANCE and GREED. Very much appreciated. I'm glad you enjoyed them both. For my next trick, watch for ROTTEN AT THE HEART, by my alter ego Bartholomew Daniels and also from Exhibit A. It comes out in April.

    Dan O'Shea

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    1. Dan, thanks for stopping by and cheers for the heads-up on your next outing. I will check it out for sure.

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