The Damage

November 5, 2012
Linskey's intense, riveting sequel to his 2011 debut, The Drop, finds Newcastle crime lord David Blake living in Thailand with Sarah Mahoney, daughter of a rival Blake has murdered. Since Sarah is unaware of his involvement in her father's demise, their life is relatively tranquil. But vexing problems in Newcastle, where Blake runs such enterprises as drugs, prostitution, and money laundering, force him to return home: a major shipment of heroin from Turkey is missing; a top member in his outfit is facing hard jail time; and rival gangs are encroaching on his territory. Even more frightening, someone is making serious efforts to kill him. Blake uses his finely tuned baser instincts to try to save his organization and his own life. Along the way, he manages to rid himself of some enemies in uniquely appalling waysâand to cling to some innate sense of decency. Agent: Phil Patterson, Marjacq Literary.

December 1, 2012
A sniper terrorizing Glasgow kills four persons randomly, then hits the legendary lawman who's after him. More than a year later, David Blakea white-collar gangster who heads Mob operations in Newcastlefigures out the sniper murders. It's all in a day's work for Blake, who has taken over Bobby Mahoney's operation after killing Mahoney and setting up housekeeping with Mahoney's daughter, Sarah, in Thailand. As he establishes legitimate businesses to launder the money made mainly from drugs and prostitution, Blake is canny enough to handle a cheating subordinate, a former rival, and an unreliable supplier, always short of starting all-out gang warfare. But it's a dangerous, high-stress business, and whendespite all precautionshis brother is shot and Blake himself is nearly killed, it's time to find the traitor inside his own organization. This sequel to Linskey's debut, The Drop (2011), is an action-packed account of a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist who lives on the edge and finds lawbreaking on a large scale about as good as it gets in the real world. Top-notch gangster fiction from a writer to watch.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)