Blood and Bone

Kyle Byrne had wonderful prospects as a young man, but has become a drifter after flunking out of college. Unable to hold a job, his house foreclosed on, living with friends and generally being a slacker, he is emotionally numb and has been ever since his father died when he was just 12 (not 14 as the blurb says) and he was denied access to the funeral, causing him to sneak in. However, when his father's former law partner is murdered, Kyle starts to question what might have really happened to his father and sets out to investigate the crime on his own - while at the same time trying to stay a step ahead of the police, who see him as the primary suspect. As Kyle discovers secrets in his past that he may not necessarily have wanted to know, he understands finally the old saying "Be careful what you wish for ... you just may get it." This is my first William Lashner novel - I have been collecting his Victor Carl series for awhile now, but haven't started reading it because I want the whole series first. I was glad to get a chance to read a stand-alone at this point to get a feeling for his writing style. I was impressed - he has a strong grasp on characterizations and is able to make every character in his book come to life - no matter how short their tenure on the page may be. He knows how to ratchet up the tension and keep it there, making the reader keep those pages turning way beyond light's out! This is definitely a great book and I would recommend it.

This book has a lot of twists and turns that will surprise you as you read it. It examines the relationships between sons and fathers, in this detective story that will surprise you and keep you turning pages wanting to find out more. I could not put this book down until the end, because I wanted to know what would happen next and who would do it. You'll definitely enjoy this book for the plot and the characters.

I'm a recent fan of William Lashner's Victor Carl series, so I'm still picking up books in that run. Thankfully, Lashner is incredibly easy to read. I'll be caught up soon. Even though Lashner has laid his series to rest (hopefully only temporarily), his writing career continues. Given his latest book, BLOOD AND BONE, he's going to be just as successful at standalone thriller novels as he was in his series. I don't know what went into the decision to shelve Victor Carl for the time being, but I hated to see that hero go. Victor wasn't a superman. He was simply a guy trying to survive in a hostile landscape where everyone seemed to ultimately turn against him. He has a lot in common with Kyle Byrne, the protagonist of Lashner's latest novel. Kyle is twenty-six and is the ultimate slacker. He doesn't know what to do with his life, doesn't know where he's going, and seems to know even less about where he came from. This book is about issues between fathers and sons, and that's an issue dear to my heart both as a father and as a son. Fathers and sons seem to get what should be simple things screwed up more often than anyone else in the world. I felt Kyle's pain about not knowing his father's true story. I don't know that many sons who know their fathers' true stories, and that theme is one that is played solidly throughout this book. I also enjoyed the fact that Kyle played little league and college baseball, and was something of a superstar. And he was always the guy looking over his shoulder to see if his father had made the game. His disappointment was true, and is something that I think every son has experienced some of at one point or another. Kyle's own troubles magnify quickly, and I was drawn into the story in a heartbeat. The opening chapter of him as a twelve year old forced to attend the funeral of the father he barely knew hooked me. The feelings he had of being totally lost during this event are easily understandable, and the results were amazingly emotional. The book moves on and picks up again with Kyle grown up fourteen years later. His mother has recently died from cancer and he's been evicted from the family home. Then, while he's playing at a softball game (his playing prowess is the only reason he keeps his job in a bar), he thinks he sees his father in the stands. As a result, he forgets to honor a promise to his boss to fill in for a shift and ends up getting fired by one of his best friends. Then, if that isn't enough, people start hunting him down, digging into an old file that was one of his father's cases. Suddenly, many of the dark secrets Attorney Liam Byrne kept for many years start spilling out into the public eye. And some of the dangerous people looking for those secrets come calling on Kyle, expecting him to know where to find the ones that are the most harmful. I really admire Kyle's character. Slacker though he may be, he's also a standup guy and a jock, a guy who doesn't back down from

Kyle Byrne grew up without his Philadelphia lawyer father and it left a mark on his psyche. The fact that his father was married to someone else when he got his mother pregnant, was never around, then died when Kyle was only fourteen, was almost too much for his young mind to wrap itself around. Kyle knows his father is dead, he'd been thrown out of the funeral, but still when he sees in the obits that a lawyer about his father's age has passed away, Kyle goes to the funeral. Kyle's a bit of a slacker, well a lot slacker. He's not good at much, except maybe playing baseball, but he doesn't have the ambition. He's just goes with the flow, sponging off friends, doing as little as possible to get by and somehow in his mind this is all his father's fault. If only he'd had some quality time with him. Then one day, a dozen years after his father's death, his father's old partner is murdered. Naturally Kyle goes to the funeral and is overcome with a desire to find out about the murder. Of The cops wanna find out everything they can about who killed the man as well and to them, maybe Kyle is looking good for the crime. Daddy's partner was killed for a file he had and Kyle wants to know what's in it. He's not alone in that, there's the cops, and some bad guys too and all of a sudden Kyle's going to have to rethink his slacker attitude if he wants to stay alive. This is a downright good book, one I enjoyed immensely. Kyle, slacker that he is, is a character I liked and cared about and I can well imagine more outings with him. There's suspense here, some humor too, some great characters in addition to Kyle is this quick read that was a lot of fun.