LUKE PRESTON - OUT OF EXILE

Synopsis/blurb......

Sometimes a little violence is a good thing

You can't go on the kind of spree ex-cop Tom Bishop did and not face consequences.

After three years of rotting in a cell, Bishop is busted out of prison in the dead of night and thrown into the middle of a police war where the stakes are high and personal.

Now, the very man who put him away calls on his help. But what starts out as a simple rescue mission escalates into an adrenaline-fuelled, action packed thrill-ride as Bishop plunges into a web of conspiracy that threatens to destroy his soul, but may provide the truth about his past.

Out of Exile is the anticipated follow up to the award-nominated Dark City Blue.

Praise for Dark City Blue

"Noir on no-doze" – Fair Dinkum Crime

"The cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy and packing heat." – Trent Jamieson, author of the Death Works trilogy

"As far as hard-boiled goes this is a hard-boiled, deep-frozen, sharpened implement." – Jon Page, Bite the Book

Last month I read the author’s first book Dark City Blue and in truth didn’t enjoy it as much as I had hoped to.  Why read the second one then you ask........well it was on Net Galley, so it was free and hey, I’m quick to judge so perhaps I needed to give the author a second chance and how many writers do you know whose first book was their best ever book?

Second time around, I enjoyed it more than last. This perhaps leads me to think that the problem last time was more one of my mood, as opposed to the writing, as this is written and unwinds at the same pedal-to-metal, breakneck pace as the first.

Our hero/villain, ex-cop and current jailbird Tom Bishop is sprung from prison after 3 years and lands straight back in the brown stuff. At gunpoint he’s forced to participate in a kidnapping as the in-fighting and corruption within the Victorian Police Department shows no sign of letting up.

Kidnap, torture, severed digits, broken noses and fractured ribs share top billing with C-4, guns, shootings, death, bombs, getaway planes and a fair few million dollars of skim as Bishop continues his pursuit of Justice and tries to save a former colleagues family.

Entertaining and enjoyable. Quite cinematic, as I could easily see this converted into an action flick. Probably not for the squeamish.

4 from 5........and on balance I would be prepared to go back for a 3^rd helping from the author.

Accessed on the Net Galley website.