Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting book, a little crowded for me with too many characters, which I found confusing. The polt had a few holes in it but on the whole a good read.

I really enjoyed this New York set thriller which attention grabbed from the very first page and never let go. Chris Cowey is a lawyer at the very prestigious law firm of Carlyle, Driscoll and Hathaway. The firm is acting on behalf of the Calcott Bank in a big and financially very worthwhile action against another bank. The litigation has come about because both sides are arguing over whose fault it was that their planned merger did not succeed.

Elizabeth Carlyle, Senior Partner, is in charge of the case and so when it transpires that junior lawyer Chris Cowey has had his phone pick-pocketed and that it contained sensitive documents relating to the trial, Elizabeth has to get those documents back. She knows it is imperative to ensure they don’t fall into the hands of their client’s adversaries, so she brings in a troubleshooter – Valencia Walker.

Valencia is ex-CIA and one of the best fixers out there. But although Valencia has the staff and the know- how to figure out who took the phone and how to track it down, things are not quite as straightforward as they at first appeared.

In a fast moving and complex thriller, Hoffman leads us on a tangled journey that goes from street thieves to mid-level organised crime to the Russian mafia and even a black-ops set up. As the vital documents change hands, and the price of their keeps going up, Elizabeth see her future crumbling and Valencia has to use all her resources to work out who has them and what they intend to do with them.

It’s great to read a financial thriller with two strong female protagonists who lead from the front and whose resourcefulness and intelligence is unquestionable. What starts as a story about a mobile phone turns out to be something altogether much bigger and the spider’s web that Valencia needs to negotiate is threaded around some unexpected places. Full of intrigue and deft use of smoke and mirrors, Hoffman shows us that there are all too plausible connections between corporate and criminal America and with billions of dollars on the line, the stakes are so high that for Elizabeth and Valencia nothing is off limits. The trick is to make sure that at the end, their hands are clean.

Verdict: A strong and intelligent thriller with a fast pace and an intriguing and diverse set of characters, fronted by two powerful female players. The action is intense and Hoffman’s New York legal and financial setting is just right for this well-crafted and believable thriller.

My next review is as follows:-

"Clean Hands” written by Patrick Hoffman and published in hardcover and kindle by Grove Press UK; Main edition (6 Aug. 2020. 288 pages ISBN-13: 978-1611856408

This a new author for me and I was attracted to him because he writes crime thrillers from a legal/financial point of view which is much different to the usual police procedurals that I am so used to.
Corporate lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on a high-stakes case, defending a prominent bank accused of fraud. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone - and the secret documents that were on it - she needs help. Badly.

Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when wealthy people, corporations and governments need their problems solved discreetly. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved: somebody has already copied the documents and blackmail is underway.

Mysterious leaks to the press and an unlikely suicide further complicate the situation. With billions of dollars on the line, Elizabeth and Valencia must outmanoeuvre their tormentors, all the while keeping their hands clean.

From the corporate boardrooms of Manhattan to the city's gritty outer boroughs, a sharply drawn cast of characters - including dirty lawyers, black-market traders and Russian criminals - take part in this breakneck tour through New York. Authentic, tense and impossible to put down, Clean Hands shows has an unputdownable quality.
The story is very fast and always changing and the only problem that I had was that the cast of characters seemed very large and it was difficult to identify what role they had after several pages. The ending seemed rather abrupt and this was the only disappointing aspect for me.
However, in saying this as in a lot of novels once you get into the story the main characters seem more memorable the more that you read. It was a very different plot from the mystery books that I tend to read and for this reason alone I will definitely buy more of his books where possible.

Recommended.

Terry Halligan,
(Advance copy from the publisher in exchange for a fair review).st him are real. The minister he is protecting is kidnapped, and it soon becomes apparent that the

This was gripping, entertaining and enjoyable. I’d read the blurb and wanted to love it so much and thankfully it lived up to all expectations. Would definitely recommend

This story is an action packed, fast paced one of high powered game play.

I liked the style and the characters and hated having to put the story down. However the end for me left something wanting...maybe it was my lack of knowledge of the American world and who was actually who? Or maybe it was the fact that it left unanswered questions about who wins, and what was the point of it all....maybe that was the point?

The characters were believable yet I was left not fully understanding if some players were small fry who had got in over their head or if everyone was in fact high powered and double crossing each other?!

Up until the end I loved it and was waiting for it all to play out and find out everyone’s motivation....but you don’t....and that for me let it down.

Elizabeth is used to a high working load and stress, but this situation might bring her down. One of her young lawyer’s phones has been pickpocketed and he had neither security nor lock on it – but highly sensitive data on their current case. The best woman to take care of such a mess is Valencia Walker, former CIA officer and fixer of unsolvable cases. Indeed, she and her team can track the phone down immediately, but nevertheless, some blackmailing takes place. While Valencia sets everything in motion to stop any more harm from occurring, Elizabeth wonders why she is doing all this and if she shouldn’t just give all up, not knowing what else there is to come.

Patrick Hoffman’s mystery novel seems to be quite obvious from the start: a young and inexperienced lawyer who is threatened and therefore sells his boss. Then, some young and rather stupid men who are simply lucky and can seize a chance when it presents itself in front of them. Quite naturally, things become a bit complicated and tricky for Valencia and her team and then – you realise that this isn’t the point of it at all.

The story advances at quite some high pace with some parentheses every now and then which provide some more depth and insight and which slow the plot down a bit so that you can take a breath before it regains speed. The number of characters makes it a bit hard at times not to lose the thread, but overall, I can only conclude that the plot is brilliantly crafted and none of what happens could be foreseen from the beginning.

Even though it is clearly fiction and I don’t tend to be prone to believing any conspiracy theories about governments or any agencies carrying out secret missions in the homeland, there are some aspects of the story which at least made me ponder about the probability. That’s what I totally appreciate in a good novel: being hooked from the start and having something lingering in my mind after the last page.

Clean Hands by Patrick Hoffman starts off with the seemingly random pickpocketing of a mobile phone from the pocket of a lawyer. This is just the tip of the iceberg as the storyline links the corporate world with the underworld; high stakes with a win at all costs attitude and ends up with a multi layered and very twisty corporate thriller.

The story moves along at a decent pace and keeps the reader turning the pages.

My only slight reservation is the number of characters some of whom were not distinct from others and the slightly choppy story telling style.

Those points aside this was the first book that I have read by this author and I will keep an eye out for his future books

Recommended

Patrick Hoffman writes an intense, fast paced and exciting thriller set in New York, so very twisted and where nothing is as it appears. Young gay lawyer, Chris Cowley, apparently loses his phone to a skilful pickpocket, an event that is to derail his life and threatens his career at the prestigious Wall Street law firm of Carlyle, Driscoll and Hathaway. On his phone are incendiary private documents that relate to the firm's most lucrative client, the Calcott Bank, whose planned merger with another bank, Emerson, fell apart. The banks are now in the process of litigation, with Calcott represented by the high powered lawyer and partner, Elizabeth Carlyle. Carlyle knows that both she and the firm are in deep trouble, she makes the decision to not use in-house security to ensure they keep their hands clean, opting instead to employ the specialist expertise of the ex-CIA Valencia Walker, an exclusive high priced fixer, used by the government, corporations and the wealthy to make their problems go away.

With the help of her regular employees, Milton Frazier and Billy Sharrock, Valencia manages to locate the phone, and Carlyle breathes a sigh of relief, thinking the problem has been resolved. However, this is premature as the firm find themselves being blackmailed, receiving a demand for a large sum of money. Valencia takes over the operation, in charge of the ransom drop, assuming the blackmailers are amateur opportunists, only to find they are outsmarted. In the meantime, they can find no leads whatsoever on the original pickpocket, he has no online presence and appears to be a ghost. In a narrative where Elizabeth begins to feel her hard won career is on the cusp of going down the drain, her worst scenario begins to materialise as the documents begin to be slowly drip fed to the media, can Valencia save her?

Hoffman writes an intense, dark, tense and highly suspenseful thriller that grabbed my attention right from the start to the last pages of the novel. There is a well drawn, large and wide ranging cast of characters from a variety of backgrounds, from low level street players, to Russian criminals, and off the books black ops groups. In what is a rarity for this popular genre, the two central protagonists are women, both extremely capable, who stand heads and shoulders above the men they are surrounded by. In this twisted story of the below the radar connections between the government, intelligence agencies, law firms, corporations and the criminal underworld, justice too turns out to be a private affair. This is a great read, with one minor flaw, the author is a trifle sloppy in his use of the same repetitive adjectives to describe far too many characters, otherwise a highly compelling thriller that many will enjoy. Many thanks to Atlantic Books for an ARC.