Product Description

Sara Labriola is a married woman haunted by the shattering secrets of her past—and terrified of the future. Tired of living in fear—and knowing that if she stays in her marriage she'll be killed—Sara decides to do the only thing she can: she makes herself disappear.

One afternoon, without telling a soul, she packs a single suitcase and leaves her life in Long Island behind. In New York City, she will reinvent herself. She will change her identity, and maybe even get the happy ending she's always dreamed of. But that dream is about to become a nightmare when her father-in-law decides to make her pay for abandoning his son.

Leo Labriola runs his modest but lucrative criminal organization like he does his family—with unspeakable brutality and zero tolerance for disobedience. He's determined to teach Sara a lesson and he'll stop at nothing to do it. Now six differently desperate and dangerous men—each with the power to destroy her—are on Sara's trail. But none of them suspect that the woman they are seeking has a dangerous secret of her own. For Sara is leading all of them down a path of private demons, past sins, and the deadliest peril.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154710 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-25
• Released on: 2005-01-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
A kaleidoscopic array of viewpoints tumble and shift in this latest suspense thriller by Edgar Award-winner Cook (The Interrogation, etc.), until the facts settle into place and the full picture can be understood. The complex arrangement of voices and events works smoothly, bringing each of the protagonists more clearly into focus as the story progresses. As the novel begins, Sara Labriola is fleeing Tony, her husband of nine years. It's not that she doesn't love him, but Tony's overbearing mobster father, Leo, casts a long shadow over Sara and Tony's marriage. Around the same time, sad sack Mortimer, a broke gambler who owes Leo $15,000, learns he has three months to live. Desperate to discharge his debts and leave a little something for his wife before he dies, he agrees to help Vinnie Caruso, who's following orders from Leo to find Sara. Mortimer turns to the shadowy Stark, an obsessive, tightly wound man who excels at finding people. Stark is haunted by the fate of a woman he found years earlier, and he suspects that this case, too, is not about a loving husband looking for his spouse. Sara, meanwhile, has stumbled into a New York nightclub frequented by Mortimer, where she gets a job as a singer. Cleverly manipulated coincidence provides much of the driving force here, to excellent effect. Although most of the characters are cookie-cutter noir, neat turns of phrase and tight plotting make for an engaging read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Edgar Award-winning Cook can be seen as a kind of master puppeteer, tightening complicated lines of suspense around the target puppet, usually an isolated woman with secrets any number of other people want her to die with--and fast. The more the target puppet moves (and Cook's heroines tend to move as far away from their pasts as possible), the more the lines surround and cripple her. Cook's latest follows this formula fairly closely. Sara Labriola lives in a lovely home in a beautiful neighborhood on Long Island, but her past casts long shadows, and her dreams have been splintered by a control-freak husband and his even more pathologically controlling father, a particularly ugly-acting Mob boss. Sara bolts, determined to leave no trace, hoping that New York City can make her invisible. Cook's narrative is couched throughout in extremely short chapters (a three-pager is unusual here). While this spy novel-style shuttling among different characters and locales lends edginess appropriate to a chase story, it can get dizzying and takes away from any real character development. Readers may get lost among the plot strands and, in a novel loaded with bad guys, forget the motivation of each. The dialogue is somewhat barren as well, being limited to the woman in peril's terse communications and the Anglo-Saxonisms of the mobsters. A terrific climax makes most of the above forgivable, however, especially for those who look to thrillers mainly for pulse pounding. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Thomas H. Cook is the author of sixteen novels, including The Chatham School Affair, winner of the Edgar Award for Best Novel; The Interrogation; Instruments of Night; Breakheart Hill; Mortal Memory; Sacrificial Ground and Blood Innocents, both Edgar Award nominees; and two early works about true crimes, Early Graves and Blood Echoes. He lives in New York City and Cape Cod, where he is at work on his next novel.


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Could not put this down
Yet another great story by Cook - this one not as dark as previous works. I liked the way each chapter is from one of the characters point of view - it gives the reader different perspectives of the same scene. Very, very fast read - a change from past Thomas Cook novels. Only minor problems are characters: one is WAY over-the-top (the bad guy), while another is under-developed (the heroine). Otherwise, a terrific book for a short weekend.

Thanks!
Thanks for the synopsis Harriet! I am sure all those people who are considering buying the book will appreciate your summing up of Peril - you have saved these people a lot of money - now they don't have to buy the book since you tell them practically everything that happens (like you do in all your reviews)

Worth reading but not Cook's best
I am a big fan of Thomas H Cook and any book by him is worth reading. However this one wasn't as deep as his others and the ending was more predictable than the masterpieces of The Chatham School Affair and Breakheart Hill. The characters seemed stereotyped--gangsters and lounge singers. Maybe he did this on purpose. I don't know. Leo Labriola was well portrayed as a "Godfather" sort of character. The rest of them I didn't care for which made the book less enjoyable for me. I am, however, looking forward to his next one.