The Damage (A David Blake Thriller, 2) - Softcover

A sniper terrorizing Glasgow kills four persons randomly, then hits the legendary lawman who’s after him. More than a year later, David Blake—a white-collar gangster who heads Mob operations in Newcastle—figures 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 when—despite all precautions—his 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. --Michele Leber