Rating: 
Summary: Oh to be Jane
Review: I have read all the books in the series and this is my second favorite. The first of course was my all time favorite.Thomas Perry is brilliant. I would love to see Jane in the movies. I can't get enough of her.You will love it.Jane is a heroine a girl can be proud of. Shes tough without being callous and I love that he shows her spiritual side.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't mess with Jane!!
Review: I started reading Thomas Perry's novels with Sleeping Dogs. On the strength of that novel,I ordered and read all of the remaining Perry novels, all of which deal with Jane Whitefield.This one was the most complicated and presented by far the biggest challange to her talents and abilities. I decided to give it four stars, only because I felt that this novel caused me to suspend belief just a few too many times. Having Jane get married a book or so earlier, Mr. Perry also deals hardly at all, with the ease that Jane leaves her husband to go about the very dangerous business of making people disappear. In this book, she takes on an additional burden. One of her charges, "Bernie the Elephant" knows where all of the Mafia's ill gotten gains are and a scheme is devised to make all of that money disappear as well. I give credit to the way that this is to happen, but it is really hard to believe that when all of the Mafia familes in the United States are looking for you and even have a rather accurate picture of what you look like, that a woman, an elderly man and a teenager are going to be able to elude these forces and remain safe while they travel about the United States and impoverish the Mafia. I also have some trouble with Jane's never ending source of money to buy cars, houses, clothing, etc. for herself and for those she is helping. How she came by that wealth is never really adressed in any of Mr. Perry's books. Having said all that, I really enjoyed the book. Its quite a tale and worth your time to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Fun, Fun, Fun
Review: Jane Whitefield returns in what may be her last adventure. I will be sorry to see her go but I can understand what the author wants to accomplish. In this latest adventure, Jane is retired from the guide business and just wants to be a happy housewife with her husband, Dr. Carey McKinnon. She is a one-woman witness protection program who knows how to hide people permanently and lead them to work new lives. She is 'retired' but just like in the Godfather movies just as she gets out she gets dragged back in. In this case it involves Rita Shelford, a former hotel cleaning lady who is now running from the mob. Bernie "The Elephant" Lupus has just died. He worked as a mob banker who does not use paper. He relies on his expansive photographic and eidetic memory to remember bank accounts and passwords. The mob is panicky because the only person Bernie ever trusted was Rita and they want to know what she knows and try to get some of their money back. After some false starts, Rita finds Jane and asks for her help. Unfortunately so does Bernie. News of his demise was greatly exaggerated. Jane travels all over the country trying to hide Bernie and Rita. They also came up with the plan to take all of the mob's money and give everything away to charity. Once the mob finds out they will do whatever it takes to protect their interests. There is a lot of suspense and action in this story. You do not have to read previous novels to understand this one but I guarantee that once you read BLOOD MONEY you will try to find her other adventures. Thomas Perry's other novels are just as good and I suggest you give them a shot.
Rating:
Summary: Jane Whitefield Strikes Again
Review: Jane Whitefield, the last hope of persons on the run, has promised herself to remain home as a housewife to her doctor husband, but gets caught up in another hide-the-person-on-the-run situation. The title of the book refers to an awful lot of the Mafia's money which Jane must help dipose of while helping a septugenarian and a teenager elude a manhunt consisting of almost everyone in the USA with an Italian surname. Although some of the plot points are a little hard to believe, e.g., a nation of Mafia families working as efficiently as the FBI to find Jane and her runners, and Jane's almost unlimited reserve of financial resources, Perry keeps the reader's interest as Jane and company race around country trying to turn dirty money into clean charitable donations.
Rating:
Summary: There's nothing like a Jane
Review: Jane Whitfield is one of the all time classic women mystery heroines. Thomas Perry perfectly captures the dread of being hunted without making his charcters seem like pathetic losers. I want more Seneca-lore! I tried to read his previous books but they are not as addictive as the Jane Whitfield mystery-thrillers. Tell his publishers to push him hard. We need another story now!
Rating: 
Summary: Slow moving and dull
Review: Maybe my expectations were too high after reading all the good reviews, but this book just didn't excite me at all. I kept trying to get into it, but by the end I was speed reading just to find out what happened at the end (not much). It is unfortunate, because Perry seems like he is probably a good writer, but the story lacks any real suspense, tension, or excitement. It is also very unbelievable, from the inital fact that Bernie "the elephant" has the location of billions in mob money stored only in his head (come on- it's the 90's), and when the money is given away to charities, they not only catch on instantly, but they then launch a nationwide net to catch Jane that would put the FBI to shame. Even the action scenes were slow paced and uninspiring. Perhaps his other books are better, because as I said, I think he could be a decent writer with a different story.
Rating:
Summary: Better and Better yet so far, folks.
Review: Mr. Perry is a rare species among the best writers in America. He is so talented with profound way of thinkings. All of his books are like artworks to me and they've made me a better thinking reader too. We have to know how to appreciate his writing; the prose, the decision of how to use a better word for a status, a situation, a movement, a feeling. Mr. Perry never cashed in with his fame but always insisted on giving the readers 110% of his products; every one of them actually worths some kind award. Reading Mr. Perry's novels not only trained you to look at a situation from many and different angles, but also subtlely giving you humanity, generosity, kindness,empathiness...Like Butcher's Boy/Sleeping Dogs, although the hero was a killer but during and after the reading, that guy only became a better person than the others, no matter how many (wise)guys he killed. "Shadow Woman" series created by him also proved that Mr. Perry is a wonderful writer who's 100% faithful to himself and 110% faithful to his readers. This series never over strung or contrived but only becomes better and better. Jane is such a wonderful creation that would never let the reader get tired. Born in 1947 only means that we could at least enjoy Mr. Perry at least for another 20 years to come.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely preposterous and thoroughly enjoyable.
Review: Ok, ok...so the premise that five or six mob families all use the same guy as their accountant and that this man keeps all their account information in his head is a bit of a stretch. (That this man's death is so easily faked is even more of a stretch, in my opinion.) Once you get past the set-up, this book is very enjoyable. So if you were a mob accountant who had faked his own death, you'd have two problems: what to do with the billions of dollars, and where to hide. If you're lucky, you'd have the help of Jane Whitefield. Jane is a woman who specializes in making people disappear. She's also smart as a whip and pretty mean with any weapon she can lay hands on. Watching her think herself two steps ahead of her pursuers is one of the joys of this series. Perry is a good writer, and the Jane Whitefield series continues to be excellent. The ending to this novel is not as climactic as in some of his other novels, but if it had been, it would have seemed formulaic. Hats off to Perry for keeping us guessing.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic thriller that interwaves Indian lore into story
Review: Once a professional vanisher, helping desperate people disappear, a weary and self-retired Jane Whitefield looks forward to a sedate married life in Upstate New York. She even promised her spouse Dr. Carey McKinnon that she no longer will step into danger. However, Jane's hopes for quiet abruptly ends when teenager Rita Shalford pleads with her for help. Rita cleans the Florida house of seventy-year old Bernie Lupus, financier to the mob. Apparently, the heads of the mob no longer trust Bernie who knows all the money laundering secrets since he created most of them. Rita and Bernie want to more than just vanish into the night. They also want $14 billion dollars of mob money to be distributed amidst charities. Regardless of her vow to Carey, Jane cannot resist the lure of the hunt. BLOOD MONEY, the fifth Whitefield book, is the best tale of a wonderfully unique series. Jane retains her freshness as her relationship with her loved one is explored. The way she allows people to disappear people disappear makes for fascinating reading. Bernie and Rita will steal the audience's hearts even though he has been a key player for the mob. The story line is fun and exciting as Jane and crew struggle to "launder" the ill-gotten loot. Thomas Perry mixes a fabulous thriller with great characters, making him one of the genre's best. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: A Vanishing Plot?
Review: Once more Jane Whitefield is asked to help out. This time the Mafia itself is involved, from coast to coast. And for most of the time the author does his heroine and his readers right. The suspense is nailbiting indeed, and the plot in ingenious, to say the least. Maybe, for once, too ingenious. Until now Perry did made us feel that Jane's struggle with all kind of modern evil is totally believable, and that she acts with a deepfelt 'righteousness', rooted in her ancestry and her person. For that kind of writing, though, plotting must be subservient to 'reality', so we can step into Jane's world and feel for her and the victims she's helping to vanish. Not so this time. The plotting itself is meticulously carved out. But the premises are, frankly, a bit too much. Perry tries to convince us that the Mob has put alls its ill-begotten eggs in just one nest, a walking human nest. He tries hard, but it's simply too much to believe that most of the Mob's money is floating in one man's memory. Not with today's reader's knowledge about high finance, off-shore banking and other kinds of wizardy. The guy maybe guarded as the proverbial walking Ford Knox, but the idea that a simple heart attack or a stroke would end it all is too much. And as the believability of the plot goes astray, so goes the novel itself. It ends up as a giant Chrismas party (oh, wouldn't we wish....), and we even feel the smiling ghost of the Butcher's Boy reading over our shoulder. Mind you, the novel is still enormously enjoyable and everyone who has taken a liking to Jane Whitefield and het world will not be disappointed. The problem is that Thomas Perry's earlier four Whitefield novels are of such a high quality that a flawed fifth is keenly felt. I sincerely hope that Jane's next encounter will be more in the realm of believability. She's simply too good to vanish.
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