Clean Hands
Patrick Hoffman
Corporate lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on a high-stakes case, defending a prominent bank accused of fraud. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone - and the secret documents that were on it - she needs help. Badly.
Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when wealthy people, corporations and governments need their problems solved discreetly. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved: somebody has already copied the documents and blackmail is underway.
Mysterious leaks to the press and an unlikely suicide further complicate the situation. With billions of dollars on the line, Elizabeth and Valencia must outmanoeuvre their tormentors, all the while keeping their hands clean.
From the corporate boardrooms of Manhattan to the city's gritty outer boroughs, a sharply drawn cast of
characters - including dirty lawyers, black-market traders and Russian criminals - take part in this breakneck tour through New York. Authentic, tense and impossible to put down, Clean Hands shows a talented crime writer hitting his stride.
Product Details
About Patrick Hoffman
Reviews for Clean Hands
The Sun
Edge-of-the-seat stuff, with two memorable female leads.
Sunday Times Crime Club
Exhilarating...with its crisp pace and superb timing, Clean Hands is a special treat
Wall Street Journal
The fun is in the details...It becomes increasingly clear that the whole thing is far more complicated, with much higher stakes, than most of the pawns in this grand chess game understand.
New York Times Book Review
Clean Hands is a terrific combination of noir mystery with financial thriller plus dirty-ops espionage, staking a claim to a highly compelling intersection of grit and glamour, with an unforgettable cast that's rich in both low lifes and the high life, and devious twists galore. Highly enjoyable.
Chris Pavone, author of THE EXPATS Clean Hands is an old-fashioned private investigator yarn - a terrific story - but skilfully brought up to date. Patrick Hoffman never slows the pace and always keeps the reader guessing. I admired the strong female characters, especially the P.I., Valencia Walker, a take-charge dame who's been around the block too many times to count.
Susan Isaacs Everything you could want in a thriller - lightning pace, dead-on dialogue and a twisting, high-torque plot. But, most of all, this novel is smart and authentic, a welcome jolt at a time when so much fiction reads like it rolled off an assembly line.
Carl Hiassen, on EVERY MAN A MENACE Subtle characterization, tricky narrative switchbacks . . . vivid, moody prose . . . closer to Denis Johnson than to Elmore Leonard
Paris Review on EVERY MAN A MENACE
Everything in his unpredictable fiction has the dissonant clink of alarming truth . . . The White Van, with its quick and scary turns, provides a hell of a ride; the action never stops - even after the final page
Wall Street Journal on THE WHITE VAN