Deadly Honeymoon

Rating:
Summary: A gripping look at the mechanics of retribution
Review: One of Block's early, non-series novels, DEADLY HONEYMOON tells the story of a newlywed couple assaulted on its wedding night by a pair of Mob assassins. After the brutal attack, the couple tracks the killers back to New York City and meticulously plots and executes a plan of revenge. As usual for Block's novels, the prose is lean and the plot compelling. The event that sets the story in motion invites skepticism -- would professional hitmen pause at the scene of a murder to rape an eyewitness, and if so, would they then leave the witness and her husband alive? -- but thereafter the storytelling is flawless, right through the shattering and cinematic gun battle with which the book closes. Fans of Block's work will note that this novel was the author's first to be written in the third person; his first to feature a scene in New York's Grammercy Park (which reappears memorably in THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET); and his first to become a movie ("Nightmare Honeymoon," 1973). Fans of this novel should try the same author's MONA and THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART or Cornell Woolrich's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping look at the mechanics of retribution
Review: One of Block's early, non-series novels, DEADLY HONEYMOON tells the story of a newlywed couple assaulted on its wedding night by a pair of Mob assassins. After the brutal attack, the couple tracks the killers back to New York City and meticulously plots and executes a plan of revenge. As usual for Block's novels, the prose is lean and the plot compelling. The event that sets the story in motion invites skepticism -- would professional hitmen pause at the scene of a murder to rape an eyewitness, and if so, would they then leave the witness and her husband alive? -- but thereafter the storytelling is flawless, right through the shattering and cinematic gun battle with which the book closes. Fans of Block's work will note that this novel was the author's first to be written in the third person; his first to feature a scene in New York's Grammercy Park (which reappears memorably in THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET); and his first to become a movie ("Nightmare Honeymoon," 1973). Fans of this novel should try the same author's MONA and THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART or Cornell Woolrich's THE BRIDE WORE BLACK.