City of Lies: A Thriller

By R.J. Ellory

John Harper has just made a discovery: the father he believed to be dead for more than thirty years is alive, though lying in a coma in a Manhattan hospital. Returning home to New York brings with it memories of childhood, many of them painful, and yet Harper could never have prepared himself for the truth.

Confronted with the reality of his father's existence, Harper finds himself seduced by a lifestyle that he seems to have inherited--an underworld life of power, treachery, and menace. As he desperately tries to uncover the facts of his own past, he is faced with one lie after another, and with each new discovery he becomes more and more entangled in a dark and shocking conspiracy.

From the acclaimed author of A Quiet Belief in Angels and A Simple Act of Violence, City of Lies is a tense and gripping thriller, each twist and turn more shocking than the last.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Oct 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781468308457

Reviews for City of Lies

[smik_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Until a week before Christmas John Harper living in Miami had thought he was an orphan. That was when he got a phone call from his Aunt Evelyn stressing that it was important he get to New York city as soon as he could. It has been 17 years since he left New York and now he learns that Lenny Bernstein, the father he had thought dead for 30 years, is lying in a Manhattan hospital critically wounded in a liquor store hold up. At the hospital Harper meets up with an old family friend whom he had always thought of as Uncle Walt.A little faster than John, the reader learns that things are not what they seem. There is a vortex of evil that slowly begins to suck John Harper in as he struggles to understand who his father actually is, and the events rush towards a climax that will mean death for many. I liked the pace at which this book moved, but I did have a problem in seeing John Harper as a real person. In my opinion too there were a couple of improbabilities, and a couple of loose ends- but I am not going to spoil your reading by talking about them here