Sleeping Dogs
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Perry's fifth novel reactivates the likable hitman-hero of his Edgar-winning first novel, Butcher's Boy (Scribner's, 1982). Purest chance interrupts this sleeping dog's 10 years of quiet existence incognito in southwestern England. When the Honorable Meg, his aristocratic inamorata, drags him to the races at Brighton, a New York chieftain's nephew, apprenticing in England, recognizes him, recalls that capo Carlo Balacontano (framed for murder at the end of the earlier book) wants the hitman dead, and tries unsuccessfully to kill him. The Butcher's Boy flies off to New York, hoping to restore his invisibility by killing Uncle Tony. Before he can leave the country, however, a Justice Department team, led by the woman lawyer who alone understood his Balacontano frame, is on his trail. More mobsters bite the dust (in Santa Fe, Buffalo, and Gary), and a stolen fax leads him to a showdown with both mobsters and the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. The Butcher's Boy is an avenging angel who wants only to be left alone; his actions make a kind of sense even when he misinterprets what he sees and when bodies litter the landscape. A fast, entertaining read. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1992)0679410643Mary Carroll

Much of the action in Perry's disappointing follow-up to The Butcher's Boy remains jumpy and disjointed as former hitman Michael Schaeffer, aka Charles Frederick Ackerman, William Wolf or Butcher's Boy, is brought out of hiding in England. Ten years have passed since Schaeffer foiled the attempt of mob employer Carlo Balacontano to have him killed in lieu of payment and then framed the Mafia boss for a particularly grisly murder. As this story opens, Schaeffer avoids an assassination attempt at the Brighton racetrack and realizes his cover has been blown. He returns to New York to find out who ordered the hit and how many bad guys may still be after him. Despite the lurid fascination of the characters' pasts, the plot seems more to congeal than thicken as Schaeffer tries to dispose of or evade all who might be on his trail, including Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Waring, so that he can retire again to the English countryside. With heroes and villains so easily interchangeable, readers may wonder who they should root for, and why. 50,000 first printing. (Apr. ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Perry is the author of four previous novels: Island ( LJ 1/88), Big Fish ( LJ 3/15/85), The Butcher's Boy ( LJ 8/82), and Metzger's Dog ( LJ 9/15/83). His new work brings Charles Ackerman--a.k.a., the Butcher's Boy, a killing-machine-for-hire--out of retirement in England and back to the United States to silence those people he mistakenly thinks have discovered his whereabouts. The story follows Ackerman as he travels coast to coast slaughtering one crime family's head honchos. Perry's book is well written, moves rapidly, and thankfully keeps the gore minimal. But reading it is an uneasy experience--a vicious hitman is not attractive as a main character. Buy where the author's earlier works are popular. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/91.-- A.J. Wright, Univ. of Alabama, Birmingham (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Since his Edgar-winning debut with Butcher's Boy (1982), Perry has inked a series of bold seriocomic thrillers (Metzger's Dog, Big Fish, Island) with ever more guffaws than grit. Here, though, he resurrects the anonymous hit-man hero of Butcher's Boy and sends him on a brawny, bloody vendetta whose rare humor is determinedly dark, even dour. In the decade since he fled to England after killing 20 mobsters in revenge for a double-cross, the ``Butcher's Boy'' has been living a life of cautious ease. One day at the races, though, he's spotted by a young American mafiosi who decides to bag the still-hunted assassin--leading to the would-be capo's instant death and soon to a pitch-black comedy of errors as the killer flies to America to settle with the mobsters he thinks are hot on his trail. A virtual juggernaut of vengeance, he lands in New York, buys a gun, and kills the young mafiosi's boss. He then jets to L.A., where, deplaning, he spots a gunman he assumes is another mafiosi- -and so he zooms on to Santa Fe and kills the head of the West Coast mob. The Butcher Boy then flies to Buffalo to buy a new I.D. but is spotted by yet another mobster, resulting in further carnage. All this gore-giddy mayhem is tethered by rich details of hit-man procedure and by flashbacks of the Butcher Boy's apprentice days, and is spun into unexpected twists by one big plot joke: The man in L.A. was not a mobster but a federal agent put on the killer's tail by his old nemesis, Justice Dept. star Elizabeth Waring. When the Butcher Boy realizes this, he decides to kill Waring--leading to lots more deaths and a tense climax that promises yet another sequel. Tough and energetic, but suffering from a moral black hole at the center: the Butcher Boy himself, a finally unsympathetic antihero whose nonstop killing makes him little more than a thinking person's Terminator.