Bibliofemme Reviews
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Kill the Messenger by Tami Hoag 
(Published by Orion)
I love thrillers. More importantly I love the way Tami Hoag writes a thriller. Combining gory death with true life experiences, Hoag produces believable writing in a way not many modern crime thriller writers can.
At the end of a long day battling street traffic, bike messenger Jace Damon has one last drop to make. But, en route to delivering a package for one of LA's sleaziest defense attorneys, he is nearly run down by a car, gets chased through back alleys and shot at. Only the instincts acquired while growing up on the streets of LA allow him to escape with his life - and with the package someone wants badly enough to kill for.
Jace returns to Lenny Lowell's office only to find the cops there. The lawyer is dead and Jace himself is considered to be a prime suspect in the savage murder. Suddenly he's on the run from both the cops and a killer with the key to saving himself and his ten-year-old brother in the envelope he still has, which holds a message no one wants delivered: the truth.
In a city fueled by money, celebrity, and sensationalism, the murder of a bottom-feeding mouthpiece like Lenny Lowell won't make the headlines. So when detectives from the LAPD's elite robbery/homicide division show up, homicide detective Kev Parker wants to know why.
Robbery/homicide has no reason to be looking at a dead small-time scumbag lawyer or chasing a bike messenger...unless there's something in it for them. Maybe Lenny Lowell had a connection to something big enough to be killed for. Parker begins a search for answers that will lead him to a killer - or the end of his career.
With Kill the Messenger Hoag has, once again, produced a gritty thriller that the reader will stay up all night to finish.
January 2006
