Blood Debt
Victor the Assassin, Book 11
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Blood Debt
Narrated by:
Peter Noble
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Peter Noble
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By:
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Tom Wood
About this listen
They want an eye for an eye. He'll fight until the last drop is spilled.
The incredible latest novel in the most visceral, action-packed series around sees the assassin Victor fighting enemies on all sides, with no allies in sight.
To make amends for past mistakes, the enigmatic assassin known only as Victor is now in servitude to the world's most dangerous criminal enterprise, the Russian Mafia. Although a hired gun without loyalties, Victor never picks a fight he cannot win so he intends to pay off his debt, however long it takes.
Yet when his new employer is shot dead in London, Victor has both the means and the motive to make him the most likely suspect. With a turf war breaking out in the power vacuum, and enemies on all sides, either Victor discovers who the real murderer is or suffer the full wrath of the Mafia's vengeance.
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Another Outstanding Instalment!
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Where to begin?
How about, simply outstanding?
The terse prose, the sheer volume of arcane, though seemingly mundane information - and all of it accurate, meticulously researched - the way in which the interplay of characters is crafted… all of these things give an insight into the mind of an astonishing character. One who, I believe, has no parallel in modern thriller fiction.
Wood has created an absolute apex predator, on a level with the Great White shark. A being who cannot stop moving; cannot stop assessing, checking, rechecking and responding to his environment, because to do so is to die. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. Yet if he slips, and allows himself a break from his fastidiously obsessive routines, Victor will die, someday, as a result of going easy (he would call it soft) on himself.
So he is always moving, always responding, always - and this is critical to the mind of the character - always moving where you least expect him to, and by extension, he is attacking. If he is after you, you’re already dead. You simply haven’t stopped breathing yet.
After the seemingly simple, astonishingly brutal story that was the absolutely wonderful, “A Quiet Man”, I had wondered how Wood would - or could - keep up this level of brilliance.
I was foolish to fear such a vainglorious withering of Victor’s story.
In “Blood Debt”, Victor piles up the enemies who are after him. Bratva, London mob, Middle Eastern arms dealers… it’s quite the list. If we are to be judged by our enemies, Victor is already the King of Killers. Throw SIS, & the Russian intelligence services, back into the mix, and it’s a rollercoaster of terrific action, gripping suspense, and wonderfully descriptive yet sharply bitten prose, that held me like nothing else I can think of, since I finished “A Quiet Man”.
No spoilers, here.
This is simply glorious. The King of Killers has no equal, it seems, even when his opponents are better skilled than he is. Because he never panics, never falters, never stops thinking. The wonderfully crafted memories, which pepper his stories, have built a picture of a young man, whose life has been so horrifically abnormal that to do as he does seems absolutely normal. It’s all he now knows. All he does. All he feels he can do. And my god, he does it so very well, indeed.
I have to comment on the performance, now. When I first heard Peter Noble reading Victor, I was disquieted. Everything is so fragmented, almost. There is no smooth flow, or when there is, it’s broken up with the softest staccato arrhythmia you can imagine, as Noble nips at phrases, bites at sentences and snarls softly - always softly - through the wonderful interplays, contained herein, his performance one of bursts of words, followed by abrupt pauses, stops and even silences.
I hadn’t heard anything like it - and I listen to a LOT of audiobooks, judging them by the quality (and qualities) of the narrator/s.
By the time I was several chapters in, I was mesmerised, as if some strange form of Ericksonian hypnosis had taken place. By that time, Noble’s performance had me totally, utterly, greedily hooked. Desperate to hear the next sentence, the next blur of chaotically crafted, yet beautifully staged action, which has a strange credibility to it (possibly/probably the result of the sheer volume and weight of Wood’s deep-diving research).
The minutiae which some (crazy people) find boring, in these novels, is a key part of the character. It’s the minutiae - and his religious observance of them - which keep Victor alive. Yet Noble manages to never allow a single fact, or action, to be tedious or remotely uninteresting.
In his clipped, yet softly spun, narration, Victor comes alive, and all other characters are carefully crafted and delineated, so that you don’t need to be told who is talking, who is asking what of whom - or who is yelling, even, in the midst of some frenetic firefight. In the world of audiobooks, for me at least, this is a critical factor. I hate it when all characters are spoken with the narrator’s own voice, or when they are so very similar that I have to pause the audiobook, to consult the written version, to check who is doing the talking, at that time. Never a hint of that, here.
Noble IS Victor. I cannot imagine another narrator now taking and delivering the character in so utterly convincing a manner. He is quite superb, in the role, and in every accompanying role, to boot!
A virtuoso performance, as assured and skilled as any concert pianist who over graced the keys (Victor fans will get the reference).
This is my favourite thriller of the entire year, the best since “A Quiet Man”, and puts all others to shame. That’s not to say that all those others I’ve read or listened to (and there are a lot of those, as this is my seventy-third audiobook of 2023, while there have been sixty-seven Kindle titles read) are poor. It’s to say this novel really is THAT good, as are every single one of the Victor series.
Head and shoulders above any competition.
Never a misstep, never a beat skipped, never a figurative foot out of place, or note out of sequence. As beautifully crafted and composed as any symphony or sonata.
Remarkable, really.
Victor is the King of Killers, while Wood is - undoubtedly, inarguably (in my opinion) - the King of Thrillers.
Simply outstanding. Head and shoulders above any competition.
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Great job
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Flawless
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It’s all about the details
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