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The Confessor    by Mark Allen Smith Amazon.com order for
Confessor
by Mark Allen Smith
Order:  USA  Can
Simon & Schuster, 2015 (2015)
Softcover
* *   Reviewed by Hilary Williamson

Mark Allen Smith's The Confessor is the sequel to his The Inquisitor, which introduced a most unusual antihero, a professional torturer! Geiger was one of two top information retrieval practitioners in the business, his methods being more psychological while Dalton's were physical and brutal. Geiger never killed his subjects.

In the first book, instead of the adult subject Geiger expected, the man's twelve-year-old son Ezra was delivered to him, and Geiger would never harm a child. He and Ezra, his partner Harry (who handled the business end) and his catatonic schizophrenic sister Lily ended up on the run from sinister black ops agents with seemingly infinite resources. Lily died and Geiger ended up being tortured by Dalton.

Of course you know he survived, as this is the sequel. And he did serious damage to Dalton in the process. Now, in The Confessor, after undergoing major reconstructive surgery, the latter is obsessed with revenge - 'Geiger had become the center of his universe'. Harry is still around but believes that Geiger died and is lost without him. But he keeps in touch with Ezra.

Zanni Soames is a member of Deep Red, a secret organization that has used both Geiger's and Dalton's services. Her job is to locate Geiger - why? Meanwhile Harry meets Geiger again and learns that he's quit his previous profession and is now making custom furniture. Of course, as we expect, all the players in this drama will converge in a violent confrontation, with betrayal at every turn. It's a most unusual series and I wonder where its author will take Geiger and associates next.

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