Product Description

At the end of long, hard day battling LA street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon is called on to make one last pick-up at a sleazy defence attorney's office - Leonard Lowell. Jace is tired, stressed and needs to get home to check up on his little brother who he's single-handedly bringing up. He makes the pick-up, but the delivery address turns out to be a vacant lot, a car tries to run him down, and Jace only just escapes. He arrives back at Lowell's office to find it trashed, Lowell dead, and himself the prime suspect. Jace is forced to elude both the police and the men who want him dead whilst he attempts to find evidence with which to clear his name. He also has to try to keep Ty, his brother, safe from someone prepared to kill...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2635016 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 432 pages

Mark Timlin, THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 2 January 2005
"Hoag is a terrific crime writer and this is one of her best."

Review
"Tami Hoag is one of those writers whose thrillers don't have to keep telling you they're exciting; they just drag you along, willingly. Marvellous characters, an intelligent plot, with humour. Highly recommended." (GUARDIAN, 4 December )

"A thriller writer who doesn't shirk on the twists and turns, Hoag is unswervingly competent and entertaining. Smart banter abounds. But despite all the hard-boiled business, Hoag has a woman's touch... here's a thriller with something for everyone." (Andrea Henry DAILY MIRROR, 19 November )

"If you like your thillers to be of the white knuckle variety -- prepare yourself for a tense time. Tami Hoag has excelled herself with the fast-paced and cleverly chilling Kill The Messenger. A fabulous thriller that has surprises right to the end." (PETERBOROUGH EVENING TELEGRAPH, 20 November )

"Hoag is a terrific crime writer and this is one of her best." (Mark Timlin THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 2 January 2005 )

"A thriller that doesn't have to keep telling you that it's exciting, but just drags you along for the ride." (HIGH & I (Highbury & Islington), 17 December 04 )

"This is another high-octane thriller set in the grimy backstreets of Los Angeles which proves Hoag to be a cut above many of her competitiors. She devises a cleverly constructed plot, terse, clean prose, and credible characters." (WESTERN DAILY PRESS, 15 Jan )

GUARDIAN, 4 December
"Tami Hoag is one of those writers whose thrillers don't have to keep telling you they're exciting; they just drag you along, willingly. Marvellous characters, an intelligent plot, with humour. Highly recommended."

Customer Reviews

A fast run through Los Angeles
This is my first Tami Hoag novel it will not be my last. This is a fast moving story full of thrills and spills. Jace Damon (our hero) is a messenger boy.He delivers messages for all kinds of people and his transport is his bike.At the end of a long day his last pick up point is at the office of a not so clean defence attorney. He picks up the package and takes it to the address only to find the address is a vacant lot. He returns to the attorneys office only to find him dead.The next thing our hero finds is that he is wanted by the police for the murder.He then finds that someone is trying to kill him. What was in the packet that the attorney gave him? This is a fast moving thriller that never halts to catch its breath. Nither does our hero. A very good read well worth the money.

Kill the Messenger, Tami Hoag
I think this will turn out to be quite a short review; if you want a synopsis, the one amazon provides is good.
There are several key questions which must be answered when you review a book like this. Most important is probably, is it effective as a thriller; does it work? The answer is definitely yes. With Hoag, it is generally always yes, but in this case it is more of a yes than ever. (That's a bit of a silly sentence; forgive me.) But the main point is this: In terms of crafting effective, exciting thriller, Hoag gets better witrh every single book. With every single book she moves further from the sometimes-heavy romance that was such a distinctive feature of her early thrillers. Now, that romance was fine, and often would give her books a very sharp emotional edge that others didn't have, but it could occasionally get too much. Now she keeps it to a minimun (there's almost no romance here at all, just an emotional knowingness) and the thriller aspects can rise to the surface. Thus, Kill the Messenger is the most effective thriller she's written so far. As usual, it's populated with interesting and very-well drawn characters that the reader can feel attached to, even if they have a tendency towards cliche sometimes.
The bottom line, really, is that if you've never read Hoag's thrillers before, this is a great place to start. With every book her ability sharpens; with every book there is less superfluity: every book is increasingly tighter. And that's not even to say that her early books weren't very good thrillers anyway (Cry Wolf is particularly superb, I thought). Kill the Messenger isn't exactly a superb, socially insightful novel, but it's a very very effective thriller that isn't going to disappoint.

Don't shoot the messenger
If you're looking for crime & suspense whodunnit novels to read on holiday, I can recommend this for your list. The pacing is excellent and the characters - by and large - believable, while the plot is sufficiently straightforward for the reader to put the book down and not be confused when you pick it back up - though there are plenty of places in the book when you won't want to put it down.
A few elements of characterisation seem pointless (so what if Jace's brother has an IQ of 168?) and the Chinese characters are little more than stereotypes, but on the whole, such things fail to grate. Treat it like the novelisation of a decent TV cop movie and you won't go far wrong.