City of Windows

A gripping thriller and a disquieting look at a nation deeply divided in its beliefs and desires. From the first paragraph you know you are in the hands of a great storyteller who can swiftly flesh out the back story and personality of a character so you feel you know them, even if they only appear for a couple of pages. A different approach is applied to the main characters with their backstories and motivations being expertly teased out through the book. It's not just characters that are well drawn, the geographic locations and action are all vividly described and you can practically feel the deep cold of winter. Thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for providing me with this free ARC and a lot of pleasure.

An absolutely stunning thriller that's so fast paced it will leave you breathless. Although laced with the darkest of dark humour, it also raises serious questions about liberty, justice and the USA Constitution's 2nd Amendment - the right to bear arms.
Seemingly out of nowhere a sniper has begun a killing spree - a sniper who is invisible and leaves no tracks. The powers that-think-they-know-it-all believe it's the work of a French millionaire playboy turned radicalised Muslim. The shooting takes place in New York during a winter which is the coldest in living memory. with city is paralysed by blizzards and huge snow drifts.
Lucas Page is an ex FBI agent who lost a hand, eye and leg in an incident he only refers to as "The Event". Now a university professor, he has no intention of ever working for the Bureau again. But the first sniper victim is his former partner, his head blown away by a gunman who killed with a single impossible shot.
Reluctantly agreeing to help out, Page is partnered with Whitaker, a female FBI agent. The two seem a perfect match - no nonsense types who do not suffer fools gladly. Page has a neat line in sarcasm while Whitaker seems to have the uncanny knack of knowing what a person is thinking and answering the question in their head before they ask it. Page has specialist skills like no other. He sees pictures in his head which illuminate a crime scene, showing him lines of trajectory by which he can accurately pinpoint the sniper's location when the shot was fired.
As thousands of FBI agents scour the country and the Internet to find a Muslim terrorist, Page and Whitaker go their own way. The the sniper kills again - and again. The only similarity is the victims were all law enforcement officers of one type or another. But what, if anything, links them together?
We learn that after a long and painful recovery from "The Event", Page remarried and he and his wife Erin are parents to a handful of damaged young children who are slowly learning to live a normal life. He never carries a gun, preferring to use his brain and his own brand of logic. Throughout the book there are many not-so-sly digs at the current US Government and many of its agencies, survivalists, racists and gun nuts. At one point he delivers a rant which neatly destroys the myth that Americans are most at risk from foreign terrorists. Members of the NRA will probably hate this book.
But, overall, this is a story of the relentless hunt for an unstoppable killer with secrets buried in the past - secrets which have been officially covered up for decades. There are a dozen twists and turns which throw the investigation off track, but Page and Whitaker keep moving with the former roping in 3 of his own students to ferret out information from massive banks of computer data. This is a highly original thriller which races along to a shattering climax. It's a truly compelling story which will leave its mark on readers whatever their attitude to guns and gun control. If there's any justice, this will be on of the big sellers of 2019. Highly recommended.

My thanks to the publishers Hodder & Stoughton Mulholland Booksand Netgalley for a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.

This is brilliant. Apart from being well written,the choice of Lucas Page as the lead character works extraordinarily well. The use of his family and personal circumstances as a background is done sympathetically. As well as a racing story with many changes of direction, there is humour and very astute comment on American gun owning and perceptive comment on racism there. Despite how that sounds,it is a balanced commentary on modern America. This is one of the best books I have read recently.