The Fireman by Stephen Leather (MOBI)

Description

Sally is a young, talented journalist living life to the full. So why would she leap fifteen floors to her death?

When the Hong Kong authorities decide it was suicide, Sally’s brother, a London-based crime reporter, begins his own investigation to find out what really happened . . .

And to exact his revenge.

User’s Reviews

From Publishers Weekly A Hong Kong on edge about its scheduled reversion to Chinese rule in 1997 is the setting for much of this suspenseful mystery. The nameless narrator was a “fireman,” i.e., a trouble-shooting journalist who covers global hot spots; now, as a London crime reporter with a drinking problem, he flies to Hong Kong because his sister Sally’s fall from a window, an official suicide, looks suspiciously like murder. The fireman realizes that his sister, an aggressive cub reporter, had just before her death been working on stories somehow implicating Chinese international gangs. Suspects include the married Chinese businessman whose mistress Sally had been and an American CIA type. Leather ( Pay Off ) has a marvelous eye for the bustle of Hong Kong and the deracinated world of overseas journalists. Although astute readers may guess who the killer is, the revenge wreaked upon him is sweet indeed. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ Of the many thrillers by Stephen Leather, I’ve read to date only THE CHINAMAN, THE STRETCH, PAY OFF, and this, THE FIREMAN, so my opinion of him as an author is still evolving. And I have six more of his books lined up on the shelf to read, with many more on my wish list.Like the previous three, the theme of THE FIREMAN is revenge. As in PAY OFF, the reader never learns the protagonist’s name. In this case, he’s a correspondent for a London rag – let’s call him “Bob” – who learns that his sister Sally, a freelance journalist, has taken a dive off a Hong Kong high-rise. Was it suicide or murder? Traveling to the Crown Colony – the book was first published in 1989, eight years before Red China took over the property – Bob is convinced she was murdered. Now, he’s got to find out why and even the score.Stephen Leather was himself a writer for Hong Kong’s “South China Morning Post”. His familiarity with the city shows and provides an ambience to the plot that’s perhaps the book’s best feature. Unfortunately, there’s not the same cleverness that I admired in THE STRETCH, where the protagonist is the wife of a British underworld boss forced to take over the business when Hubby is put behind bars, or THE CHINAMAN, where the hero is a Vietnamese immigrant to the UK out to exact vengeance on the IRA for a London bomb that caught his daughter in the collateral damage. THE FIREMAN reads more like a mediocre detective story. Only on page 192, when the reader becomes privy to an unsuspected aspect of Bob’s relationship with Sis, did I do a mental double-take and think “Say, what!?” But Leather never develops this surprise further, and his hero eventually marches to the volume’s conclusion never seeming as truly driven as he should be under the circumstances, and the ending was curiously flat.I gather that THE FIREMAN was one of the author’s earlier works. While I might have given it four stars in a vacuum, in comparison with the other three, especially THE CHINAMAN and THE STRETCH, three is max.

⭐ Fun and exciting thriller. Interesting character development and well written. Good wins, and so does evil. I’d read another book by Leather.

⭐ Excellent

⭐ Really good yarn written in an amusing & sometimes cynical style. Thoroughly enjoyed the story & would recommend you read it.

⭐ This author just does not write poor novels and this is no exception.i believe this book was the first Stephen Leather IPicked up & as I’ve mentioned before they just keep you wanting more

⭐ I have lived in Hong Kong since 1996, the last 5 years on an intermittant basis but this book captures the esscence of the city so well, you can almost picture the places as they are depicted in the book. It really is a walk down old memory lane to read about Makati, Dickens Bar, Kowloon Cricket Club and as a former resident of Yeung Leung I am no stranger to triad activity. As an overview of the City that the lonely planet guide will never provide, this book is worth its cover price for this alone.The story itself is no where near as pacy as the Dan Sheppard Books but the plot quite cleverly unfolds. The Character Lau is fascinating as he can be incredibly cold but exteremely loving of Sally the murdered sister and also callous when dishing out his own form of rough justice in the books climax.I found the storyline at times a bit hot and cold but the ambience of Hong Kong picked up the low points. The climax was very good as a chess match of mind games unfolded over dinner.Definently not one of Stephen Leather’s best books but just as Private Dancer captured Thailand to Perfection, this does the same with Hong Kong.

⭐ It’s got to ‘get me’ in the first one or two paragraphs but I plodded along with it.I put it down two thirds of the way through as it puzzled me and I couldn’t get to grip of the ‘plot.’If this was a film, I would have turned it off well before now.Not as good as Stephen Leather’s other books, that’s for sure and I’m an avid fan of his writing.

⭐ Luckily for me I had read almost all Leather’s books (apart from the erotic ones – not interested), otherwise this one would have put me off altogether. There was that deja vu feeling about it, possibly due to the hong kong scene which I enjoyed in his other outings but for some reason left me cold in this one. I didn’t care one way or another for the main character, the victim or the villian who was introduced in the story as an after thought. It felt as if the writer was more interested in describing the Hong Kong scene than in developing his characters and story. So this is more of a historical view of the sleazy side of Hong Kong at that time.I understand this is one of the earlier ones for Mr Leather so I will forgive him as he has given me so much pleasure in his later outings, such as the Spider and Cramer series, a pity he killed Cramer off. Apropos the later, any chance of resurrecting him Mr Leather? – he could have left a son whom he didn’t know about and who found out about his father and followed into his footsteps etc.., just an idea, a girl can dream!

⭐ This book had a good story line but the description was over top as if the author was just trying to fill up pages, I skipped a lot and still managed to get what happened. Got bored but stuck with it!

⭐ I was totally disappointed in this book. There was no suspense too much going off the story, it took me over a week to read as it was so boring. Stephen Leathers other I read in 2-3 nights

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