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24 reviews for:

Better Off Dead

Tom Wood

4.1 AVERAGE


1st read August 2015
Re-read June 2016

Really enjoyed this book, the fast action packed thriller got you hooked on the characters excellent book

Not one I would have chosen myself - it was my book club read for May.
The first section was bloody and set the scene for cold clinical violence.
That said, I got drawn into the story and found it compelling. I wanted to know if Victor would manage to protect the girl and come out the other end safely whilst being appalled by the body count!
THs story is told in a clincal and detatched manner and perhaps that's what makes it easier to deal with the blood and violence.
It is fast paced and of course the hero is capable of amazing feats of endurance and cleverness.

When he debuted in 2011's The Killer, Victor the assassin was using a Russian mobster as a sort of "agent" in setting up his carefully planned jobs. That mobster betrayed him and Victor cut ties with him, but now he's called Victor for help, The mobster has a stepdaughter who was never a part of his criminal enterprise but who has been targeted by those seeking revenge of their own, and he wants Victor to protect her until he can unravel the tangle of who has come after him and deal with the matter. Victor isn't a bodyguard, but he's spent a long time thwarting their efforts and has picked up a trick or two. So when he agrees to help protect the young woman, he counts on success. Once he can find her, that is. And once he can figure out whether her enemies want her so they can get to her stepfather, or because of something she knows.

No Tomorrow is Tom Wood's fifth novel of his assassin and the first to give Victor something or someone other than himself in which to invest. It's a wise choice, because in the previous four books he's already fully painted his anti-hero as an obsessively paranoid, hyper-violent, super-observant killing machine who every now and again grasps at a tattered rag of humanity and honor. Yet another novel on those lines would probably start digging a rut Wood might not be able to dig out of. He continues to excel at generating and maintaining tension and writing explosively gripping action sequences and fight scenes. He drizzles wry humor into the interludes but doesn't lay on the sang-froid too thick.

But Victor isn't Superman; his wins come at a cost physically and emotionally and Wood does not shy away from them. The descriptions of his elaborate security and protection measures give a clear sense of the overwhelming energy it takes Victor just to stay alive another day. Victor's daily - or maybe hourly -- struggle is not to win, but just to survive. The only difference is that for him, survival is winning, and you get a picture of a man who would fight to draw one more breath than his opponent for no other reason than doing so means he won.

No Tomorrow might be a place where Wood changes directions or begins to add some layers to Victor's story. If he does, it will be a very welcome development in a series that was still operating at a high level but may have done about all it could do along its former path.

Original available here.