Intriguing book excerpt. I will have to check this one out. I really enjoy thrillers, especially when you see the characters struggle with their decisions, with the prospect of redemption down the road.

Looking for a high drama thrill ride where the lines are blurred between heroes and villains? Tom Wood’s THE FINAL HOUR will have you questioning who are truly the villains in a world filled with political intrigue, betrayal and those assigned the tasks of cleaning up life’s loose cannons, or loose ends, if you will.

Victor is a loner, an expert in all things covert. He is an assassin, a tool to be used by the highest bidder, but it isn’t personal, it’s his job and he is very good at it. He doesn’t do soft and cuddly, he cannot depend on anyone but himself, until he becomes the next target of an assassin, himself. There is only one person he can count on, a female assassin he once let live, just barely. Now he needs Raven to return the favor and “kill” him. A case of the devil you know?

If there is honor among thieves, there must be some special oath among assassins other than kill or be killed because two survivors in a world of brutality and death will join forces in a tentative truce in order to live another day. Will there be any questions or doubt? Can Victor and Raven co-exist for a brief time and walk away? There is more on the line than meets the eye and only the strong will survive.

Tom Wood has created an anti-hero that one cannot help but root for in a dark world where death can be bought and denial is a given. Brilliant dialogue, razor sharp tension and events that will have your imagination running full speed!

Not a tale to rush, allow it to sink in, visualize each scene and marvel at what kind of planning would go into pulling off the perfect assassination or even rescue. Imagine living as a shadow in the world, unseen, yet with the ability to strike like a cobra and disappear like a ghost.

THE FINAL HOUR may re-define your concept of what true evil really is as it hides behind lies and the money to purchase death.

I received an ARC edition from Berkley in exchange for my honest review.

Series: Victor the Assassin - Book 7
Publisher: Berkley (August 29, 2017)
Publication Date: August 29, 2017
Genre: Thriller | Suspense
Print Length: 448 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

Intriguing!This is the first book I’ve read by this author, and I can see why this is a best-selling series. There is action from page one, with a female assassin recovering from her own death. What? Yep. Her own death. It was an interesting trick and very painful. The female assassin, who calls herself Raven, was my favorite character in this story. She’s a highly skilled, trained and used by the CIA and other government agencies to carry out missions that would embarrass the government. Until she realizes that some of her kill orders are coming from persons unknown, that may be working behind or above the government…and she turns on them. She is also quite attracted to Victor, even though they are only working together for a time for mutual benefit.

And Victor. Wow. He’s deadly. He’s effective. He’s a master strategist. Not the man you want to mess around with. In a way, though, he’s a pretty nice guy…for an assassin. He tries to never inflict more pain than necessary on his targets unless he’s forced to. Nice, right? There’s at least one good thing about the worst people, I suppose. His short-term alliance with Raven was action packed. Lots of hand to hand combat, many gun fights and traveling through city after city. Constant action from a man who seldom sleeps twice in the same city. A lot of people want him dead, he can’t afford to be still.

i enjoyed this book. I think it would have served me well to have read the previous books first. It’s not a great stand-alone, still it was a fun and exciting read. If you’re a fan of this series, you should really enjoy this new episode with Victor. If you’ve never read the previous books, you probably will enjoy it anyway.

2shay

The end of an era but also the start of something new – Wood’s best novel to date!

Thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for providing me an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Victor is the ultimate assassin. An angel of death without mercy or conscience. But his past dealings with the CIA not only earned him a shoot-on-sight order, but also made him a marked man in his chosen profession. And to top it all off, a femme fatale he once saved is about to re-enter his life with a bang. And she has powerful enemies of her own…

From the get go I was especially intrigued by this volume of the Victor series, since it promised to bring back a lot of familiar faces and tie up loose threads from previous books. I practically signed up to Netgalley just for the slim chance of getting my hands on this book a couple of months early! It worked and at the end, THE FINAL HOUR was everything I hoped it to be… But also so much more!

There has always been an odd sense of elegance, watching Victor meticulously planning his actions and then see him carrying them out with deadly precision. Tom Wood’s writing not only transports the reader directly into the scene – be it the Majesty of Rome or the cold streets of Helsinki – it also immerses them in Victor’s mind, depicting his sometimes unsavoury yet always fascinating thought process in awe-striking detail.

Another known quality of Mr. Wood, is his infallible sense for creating memorable, imaginative action-scenes, which will let your heart pump faster and probably make the Helmer of the Bourne Movies green with envy! Also of note are the returns of some fan-favourite characters. The enigmatic female assassin, going by the codename Raven and the ruthless but quite likable CIA heavyweight Roland Procter are just two prominent members of the impressive ensemble of old and new characters, featured in THE FINAL HOUR!

But what lets this book rise not only about its predecessors but quite possibly the entire competition of 2017, is the deftness of its plotting! Tom wood effortlessly weaves multiple different plot threads into an ever twisting and utterly compelling narrative, which not only puts a nice bow across past events but also sets the stage for many more books to come. Which is just as well, as I have the inkling that Victor – and his creator – are just getting started!

p.s. If you would like to learn more about Victor, the series and Tom Wood, be sure to visit the goodreads page shown in the link below on June 25th , to attend a Q&A with the author!

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/17612789-ask-me-anything-interview-tw

I love a good mystery/thriller novel and I have to say that Tom Wood's The Final Hour encompasses all that should come in a mystery/thriller title. To me, the book read as a great movie in a novel style written with intense suspense, immersive action, and tons of interesting information about weapons.
I really liked the 2 main characters but also found that the main antagonist, a covert government agent didn't act like the typical government agent either. "Tesseract" or Victor, the main male character was both an antagonist to the agents out there hunting him down while also as a protagonist in evading the hunt and eventually helping out the other main character, a female rogue operative.
Victor and Raven were neither inherently good or bad, they simply did their jobs for money and for a living. Perfect hired assassins with no family or background these two characters were so skilled in their jobs that it was their life. Their livelihood. Their way of living.
Since this is the 7th book of the Victor series I'm not sure how much of his past has been revealed in the preceding books but I will definitely pick up the other ones in the series to get a better idea of Victor and his past. I would also love to read more about Raven - her character was witty, insightful, and endearing. She didn't enjoy her job so much as Victor did (I surmised) but she did it rather as a way of living since she was an orphan and was dealt an unfortunate life before becoming a secret agent.
What I loved about the book - Every word in the book was cleverly written and thought out. Every step in the book peels back layers of the characters (both main and supporting) to reveal truths and insights of their lives and their thoughts. The book was very fast paced and very easy to read. It read like a movie - reminded me of the modern Mission Impossible movies starring Tom Cruise. Each scene had separate stories that eventually led to the climax at the end. The scenes all pulled well together creatively and the author was quite genius in how everything tied up towards the end.
I would definitely recommend this to mystery/crime/thriller fans.