Cutting Blades

By Victoria Blake

Private investigator and judo champion Sam Falconer returns in this follow-up to Bloodless Shadow. To discover the truth behind the disappearance of a talented young rower from Oxford University, Sam must open a Pandora's box of secrets.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425209997
• ISBN13: 9780425209998
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Good.. But missing something...

This book is good. Unfortunately its only that, good. Don't get me wrong, I just couldn't put it down at one point. But you just get to a point and you realize that Ms. Blake will not be able to finish as well as she's ran throughout the book. Its missing something, I just can't quite put my finger on what. This book holds in its bounds great literature, something rare in books today. The pictures Ms. Blake paints are startlingly clear. She doesn't just take you on a flight of fancy, though you are along for the ride, she carries you through Pandora's Box without completely miring you in her character's misery. Her attempts at humor, because it is British humor, is a little hard for American's at least to decipher and the book suffers from the loss of that lightening aspect. I think really its the ending, the climax that suffers the most flaws. She worked so hard on the rest of the story that it looks like she ran through the climax in a hurry just to get it over with really. Like I said the book is good. But just that. Good. Great character though. Ms. Blake just needs to work at her art just a little bit more and she'll be a great writer.

3.5 Stars - Too much personal story

First Sentence: "In the grey morning light, he looks like a giant standing on Putney Bridge in softly falling snow." At four-years old, PI Sam Falconer had been told her father had died a hero. Now she finds not only that he is alive but had been part of an assassination squad for the British Government. His return has caused a major upheaval in her family, great anger in Sam and put them all in danger. But she needs to keep working having been hired to find a young man who may be the best stoke ever for the Blue Team in the historic Boat Race, and as a bodyguard by an estate jewelry dealer who lives upstairs and is being threatened. While there were multiple cases to be solved, this was almost more a personal story for Sam. It was a good story; I liked it but I can't say it was a good as her first book. I'll hope for better from her third try.