Blood Money [Mass Market Paperback]

Penzler Pick, March 2000: When Thomas Perry won his Edgar for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America in 1983, anyone who'd read The Butcher's Boy cheered. That remarkable tale of a likable hit man stayed in one's mind long after the last page had been turned. Now with nine more highly original thrillers to his credit, Perry still knows how to keep us enthralled and, even better, surprised.

After several standalone titles, Perry began to produce a series unlike any other, giving us in Jane Whitefield a heroine that I'd have to imagine many of Hollywood's hippest young stars are fighting to play. Introduced in Sleeping Dogs, Jane is a "guide" of a very special kind, a sort of warrior-goddess capable of the most daring feats of cunning and courage who by day pursues a satisfying life off the radar as a suburban surgeon's wife. Her ordinary existence is, in fact, so contented--and her husband so worried for her safety when she's helping mortally threatened men, women, and children--that each time she's approached with a desperate case by a new victim of evil, her first instinct is to say no. But there would be no series if she did, and we would miss her intricately assembled exploits.

Picture the Scarlet Pimpernel looking like the singer Buffy Ste. Marie (Jane's of native American heritage) and equally skilled at disguise and seat-of-the-pants strategy. Isn't that the sort of companion you'd welcome if you were on the run from the Mob with $20 billion (that's with a "b") of their money, its secret whereabouts all stored mnemonically in your head? Maybe you'd rather have the U.S. Marine Corps on your side, but if that's not an option, newcomers to the Jane Whitefield books will quickly learn (and her fans already know) that she can pull it off on her own. A wonderfully entertaining element of these original adventures is that Jane's guiding principle is simplicity. Thus, the reader's vicarious thrills lie in watching the process, the twists and turns of her schemes and, above all, her amazing capacity for forethought.

Blood Money, like all the novels by Perry, works equally well on the level of character study as it does in nail-biting suspense. The novels can be read as much for their remarkable insights into human nature as for the excitement of a first-rate thriller. Surely Perry ranks among the very top of the crime-writing fraternity. --Otto Penzler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Jane Whitefield, first introduced in Perry's Vanishing Act, makes her fifth appearance as a ghostmaker, someone who provides new identities for people in trouble. In this fast-paced thriller, Jane, a one-woman witness protection program, is semiretired, married to a doctor and living a quiet life until a teenage girl, Rita Shelford, comes to her door seeking help. The girl is being hunted, having witnessed a mob shakedown at the Florida house she was employed to clean. Protecting the girl propels Jane into a series of adventures involving Bernie the Elephant, an old man with a photographic memory who has kept Mafia financial records in his head for decades. With Jane's help, Bernie steals billions of dollars from the Mafia accounts and donates the money to charity. Not happy, the mobsters use every trick to capture Jane and Rita. The two women cross the U.S. several times, barely staying one step ahead of their pursuers. While there are many exciting moments, the story bogs down in several places while the mobsters speculate, rehashing information the reader already knows. Perry's writing style and vocabulary are easy and simplistic, and Jane sometimes seems too cool, and too smart, for her own good. The Mafia characters are numerous and interchangeable, and the story ends limply, with four unnecessary closing chapters. This is far from Perry's best, but it's still a quick, easy read with a few thrills. (Jan.) FYI: Perry won an Edgar for The Butcher's Boy.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

In Perry's tenth novel (the fifth in the Jane Whitefield series), JaneAwho is part Native American and who regularly helps fugitives disappearAleaves the attractions of husband and home to help an 18-year-old and an old man who are fleeing the mob. About to be replaced by computers and facing certain death, Bernie "the Elephant" Lupus, who handledAin his headAthe finances of 12 major mob families for 50 years, fakes his own murder and winds up in the hands of Jane, at first out to help only his maid. But soon the three of them, along with an accountant, are involved in a plot to steal over $14 billion of the mob's investments and then donate the funds to charity. Even readers who find the setup far-fetched will enjoy the fast pace of this entertaining thriller with its resourceful heroine, fascinating characters, convincing development of intrigue, and ever-present menace.
-ARonnie H. Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

" I'm not a believer in last stands. I'm a believer in running." But Jane Whitefield, a professional "guide" who helps people in trouble disapper, hopes she's through running. Married to a surgeon and living quietly in upstate New York, Jane wants to set down roots of her own rather than helping others uproot themselves from endangered lives. A good plan--until a girl in trouble knocks on the door and mentions the name of a mafioso with whom Jane has a past. All of Perry's Whitefield novels are plot-rich adventures in which the external world hides threats both seen and unseen, making details matter even more than they do in daily life. This time the idea of outthinking the opposition, or at least thinking first, is even more at the center of things than usual, since one of the two people Jane strives to disappear is Bernie the Elephant, the Mob's one-man money launderer who cleanses warring families' cash but never writes anything down--the location of the loot is all in his memory, much as Jane's success as a guide is contingent on the details in her head. Hatching a plan to give the Mob's money to charity, Jane and Bernie quickly learn that making money disappear is every bit as tricky as making people disappear. What makes this series so consistently engaging is not only Perry's ability to cleverly untie the Gordian knot of his plots but also to draw us closer and closer to his people. Details make a successful thriller, but they can also overwhelm the inferior one. Perry mixes plot and character with great delicacy, producing a superbly emulsified whole. Bill Ott --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Jane Whitefield usually makes people disappear (The Face-Changers, 1998, etc.), but this time it's money: mob money that prompts La Cosa Nostra to chase Native American Jane all over the country in a terrifically plotted nail-biter. When trying to explain her remarkable talent for aiding clients to elude the ill-disposed, Jane often credits her Senecan forebears, so many of them expert trackers (and un-trackers). Be that as it may, she's world-class at the vanishing actso good that by now the process has become addictive. Thus, despite those promises to her beloved husband, Dr. Carey McKinnon, few Whitefield fans will expect her to say no when 18-year-old Rita Shalford asks for help. Waiflike Rita kept house in Miami for Bernie Lupus, ostensible owner of a property that in reality belongs to a ``Family'' consortium. Waiflike in his own right (though 70), Bernie was for years the mob's money-minder. Now, clinging together for support, he and Rita are on the run because the LCN (La Cosa Nostra) has grown nervous about the booty and distrustful of its minder. Through a friend, they've come to Jane. Not only do they want to disappear, they want that mountain of money wrested from the control of the wicked. But how? What can be done to ten billion dollars to remove it permanently from organized evil-doers? Easy, Jane says. Give it to organized good-doers, the Red Cross and hundreds upon hundreds of other charities, thereby chilling the blood of all self-respecting capos. Well, not so easy, actually, but the fun is in how it gets done, and in Jane's elegant razzle-dazzle, as again and again the mob grabs at her slender form only to come up clutching thin air. Compulsively readable. If Jane seems to know more about everything than anybody else, so be it. You'll like it that way. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

“Brilliant . . . Buy it: I guarantee you’ll be up all night.”
–Los Angeles Times

“DOWNRIGHT DAZZLING. . . The little voice that promises adventure and danger in Thomas Perry’s hide-and-seek thrillers sends out another irresistible summons in Blood Money.”
–The New York Times Book Review


“It didn’t take long before I was hooked, totally immersed in the life of Jane Whitefield. . . . The plot takes one unexpected turn after another.”
–Austin American Statesman

Praise for The Face-Changers


"The momentum never flags, and the suspense constantly builds..the Whitefield novels bring plotting and supsense to center stage without sacrificing character. That is no small achievement, the equivalent of a great architect also excelling at portraiture."--Booklist

Praise for Shadow Woman

"The suspense is unrelenting."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A fascinating tale written by one of America's finest storytellers...his best yet--and that is saying a lot becuase both Vanishing Act and Dance for the Dead were terrific."--San Francisco Examniner

"Enough suspense to keep the pages turning all day...or late into the night."
--Publishers Weekly


--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Thomas Perry won an Edgar for The Butcher’s Boy, and Metzger’s Dog was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His other books include The Face-Changers, Shadow Woman, Dance for the Dead, and Vanishing Act. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.

1

There were still moments when the old life seemed to be on the verge of returning—there would be something out of place near the vanishing point of her sight or in the periphery. A bit of the past seemed to materialize for an instant, just long enough to catch Jane’s eye and cause her to remember it, then recede again to become indistinguishable from the soft, familiar landscape. Sometimes it would be no more than a sound—a spring-loaded metallic click-scrape noise that turned out to be a door bolt slipping into its receptacle, but could have been the slide of a pistol cycling to snap the first round into the chamber.

Usually it would be a man who made her uneasy. A few times it had been men in crowds who had resembled other men from other times. Once it was only a stranger in a deserted mall parking structure who happened to be walking in the wrong place for too many steps—a bit behind Jane and to her right, where she would be most vulnerable to attack. The old habits of mind emerged again in a reflex. As she prepared her body to make the sudden dodge, her ears listened to his footsteps to detect a change in his position. Her eyes scanned the area around her to record its features—the shapes of parked cars she could put between them, small pools of bright light on the pavement to avoid, the railing she could roll over to drop to the next level down without running for the stairs. Then, as each of the others had done, this man changed his course, unaware that he had startled her, and walked off in another direction. Usually it had been men. Today, it was just a young girl. From a distance, the girl looked about fourteen: the thin, stringy blond hair that kept getting in her eyes; the narrow hips and bony chest; the clothes she wore that were a little too tight and too short, but made Jane wonder about her mother rather than about her. The girl first appeared on the Seneca reservation, and that was the first sign. She was too blond to be somebody’s cousin from Cattaraugus or Allegany, and too young to work for the government, and Jane couldn’t see any obvious explanation of how she had gotten there.

It was twelve miles from the Tonawanda reservation to the house in Amherst where Jane and Carey lived. Since Jane had begun to construct her new life she had spent more and more time on the reservation. First, she had visited friends and relatives, then let the friends talk her into going with them to meetings about tribal issues. At one of them she had volunteered to work in an after-school program to teach the old language to kids who had not learned it. All of them knew some words and phrases, and a few could make sentences, so the classes were easy and pleasant.

Jane had held her walks three times a week for over a year on the day when she first noticed the girl. Jane had waited on the high wooden front porch of Billy and Violet Peterson’s house under the tall hemlock and watched for the school buses. When enough of the children had gathered, Jane had gone inside with them and talked. The simple, inevitable logic of languages was appealing and satisfying to her students: “ah-ga-weh” is mine, “ho-weh” is his, “go-weh” is hers, “ung-gwa-weh” is ours, “swa-weh” is yours, “ho-nau-weh” is theirs.

But a language carried implications and assumptions that had to be explained. There was a history even in its lapses and absences. A modern Seneca conversation was filled with borrowed words for the things that filled the children’s houses—computers, television sets, microwave ovens.

Jane found herself taking the group out to walk the roads and fields and woods of the reservation to talk about the world. Whatever scurried across the path ahead of them or hung in the sky above or shaded them with its branches she could talk about without words from new languages.

Most of the time, if Jane saw a teenaged girl watching, she would wait until the girl’s curiosity led her close enough, then invite her to join the walk. This girl appeared at the edge of a distant stand of sycamores, then disappeared. Jane saw her five times that day, but the girl never came closer. Jane couldn’t help knowing at each moment the route the girl must be taking, and where she would appear next. That was part of what Jane had spent years training her mind to do. When she had seen the girl twice, she could follow the rest of her progress with as little conscious effort as a hunter needed to track the trajectory of a pheasant.

Jane asked her little band of linguists who the girl was, but each of them waited patiently for someone else to answer. Jane said, “If she comes to join us, I want everybody to make her feel welcome.”

But she didn’t. The last time was when Jane got into her car at the Petersons’ house. Jane considered driving a quarter mile, then quietly making her way back through the woods on foot to come up beside her for a talk. Jane lowered her head and pretended to search for something in her purse while she kept her eye on the rearview mirror. The girl was coming out of hiding to talk to a couple of Jane’s students. Now that she could see her clearly, Jane began to feel a vague sense of discomfort.

There was a haggard, feral look around the eyes, and a set to the thin lips. It was a small-featured, precocious look that reminded Jane of the undercover policewomen they sent into high schools to impersonate students. Jane started her car and slowly pulled out onto the highway. If the girl was just a girl—maybe a friend of one of the kids on the reservation—then probably she would overcome her shyness by Monday. If she wasn’t, then Jane had accomplished what she had needed to: she had memorized the face.

Almost certainly, this was just another time when Jane’s old reflexes had been triggered by something innocuous. She glanced at her watch. She would have just enough time to make a few calls for the hospital fund drive and then get ready for dinner.

Jane finished setting the dining room table, then walked back into the kitchen to wash the crystal wine glasses by hand. She had noticed that there were water spots on them. If Carey had been here, she would have said it was because the last time they had been put away, she and Carey had both been suffering from the ill effects of having used them the night before. They only had wine with dinner on special occasions, and special occasions always ended the same way in this house. The wine glasses would end up somewhere in the bedroom, and the dishes would be left for morning.

As Jane rinsed the two glasses and reached for the towel, she saw in her memory her mother making the same motion in the small house in Deganawida. Her mother had probably been the happiest woman Jane had ever met. She had also been a fraud. She had decided at the age of twenty—or twenty-two, as Jane had corrected her after her death—who she wanted most in the world to be, and then spent the rest of her life impersonating that woman. It had been a very sophisticated, wise thing to do, and what had prompted her to do it had been the same five or six years that had given her the sophistication. Jane had grown up knowing little about her mother that was true. Her mother had been an expert at cheerful evasion, and when Jane would ask insistent questions, she was capable of lying with tenacity and consistency. What was true was that Jane’s mother had somehow turned up in New York at the age of sixteen alone. The next five or six years were what she never spoke about. Jane had learned a little after she had grown up. Her mother had spent those years in the company of men who had money to share because they took it, and who, without thinking of it, offered her a certain safety because they inspired fear. At the end of the time, in a display of the preternatural cunning that people who live on the margins develop as a substitute for everything else, she had re-invented herself.

She had met Henry Whitefield, a worker in structural steel who traveled the country with a crew of men—three Mohawks and a couple of Onondagas from Grand River, and two other Senecas. Now that Jane was a grown woman, she knew that their chance meeting had been contrived. Her father, Henry Whitefield, had been too perfect a counter to the men her mother had decided to desert. He was tall, with skin like a copper penny and eyes like obsidian. He was scrupulously honest—even blunt—but most of all, he was manifestly not a man who could be dissuaded by any conceivable threat of harm. Men who walked on steel girders twenty-five floors above the street in uncertain winds were unlikely to be intimidated by anything they met on the ground. The fact that he traveled in the company of a whole crew of similar men would have reassured her too: she would have misinterpreted it at first, because it looked like the way her old companions behaved. But she had been a woman with acute instincts, and she had probably sensed that the misinterpretation was not entirely wrong: if he were in danger, the others would circle around him.

They were both long dead now, but they were not absent. They had taken up residence behind Jane’s eyelids. Jane’s mother had re-invented herself as Mrs. Henry Whitefield and lived the next eleven years in blissful imposture. She was the sort of wife who always looked as though she had just changed her clothes and fixed her makeup. She was the sort of mother who had time for everything and overdid the birthdays and indulgences. And she had tended Jane as though she were training her to rule a small kingdom.

Before Jane was born, her mother became conservative in dress and manner like other children’s mothers, but it didn’t disguise either the reasons why she had gotten into her troubles or why she had survived them. Henry Whitefield’s best friend, Jake Reinert, who still lived next door to the old house in Deganawida, had o...