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


From Publishers Weekly
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.


From Library Journal
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.


From Booklist
" 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


From Kirkus Reviews
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.


Review
“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


Review
?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

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jane Whitefield, the fearless "guide" who helps people in trouble disappear, has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon when she is called upon again, to face her toughest opponents yet. Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso. The deceptively simple task of hiding the girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the Mafia's moneyman. Bernie has photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century, he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time, stealing billions from hidden Mafia accounts, only to face the unprecedented problem of what to do with that much money.

FROM THE CRITICS

Linda Turk - Mystery Review

In Blood Money the story moves quickly, with even minor characters drawn believably, so that a great range of individuals populates a story of intrigue and suspense. It's an all nighter, for sure.

Library Journal