Rob Hart’s City of Killers is one of the most exciting new action-thrillers I’ve read and he continues to build up his characters and situations in the most personal and creative entanglements.
After leaving his old life in New York, Mark now hides away from his past in Bangkok. The only thing he kills now is time by keeping a low profile and attending Assassins Anonymous, a global network of killers making amends for their violent ways. When he meets a father searching for his missing son, Mark’s moral compass lands him in hot waters and crosshairs of every killer in Bangkok's underworld. Fighting against grains of thugs and killers to find the young boy, Mark’s sobriety will be tested to its roots.
Rob Hart has written a beautiful love letter to action fans. You’d think that Mark's self-imposed ban on killing would yield to more name-calling and less ass-kicking but Mark does both in equal measure. Hart writes terrific and detailed high-octane action sequences that make you feel every punch, kick and dodge that Mark deploys in his crusade. The crisp and smooth descriptions of the combat sequences are evidence enough that Rob Hart must have learnt the trade of mixed martial arts quite well to write these fight sequences so adoritly.
It’s not just the action that grabs your attention in this book. It’s the philosophy by which Mark lives his life. A flawed but determined character on his journey to impart good on this world, it’s admirable to say the least. The circumstances make for tricky situations where you’re in deep rumination with Mark to determine if his no-killing rule can have exceptions when he goes up against the kind of monsters he does in this narrative. This makes for a compelling and thoughtfully ponderous read.
City of Killers is by far my favorite Rob Hart novel and it goes a long way to show his range as he expands his universe of characters to such a vast global scale. You won’t be disappointed with this one.
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