{"id":21186,"date":"2025-10-01T19:36:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21186"},"modified":"2025-10-01T19:36:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T23:36:57","slug":"eddies-boy-by-thomas-perry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=21186","title":{"rendered":"‘Eddie’s Boy,’ by Thomas Perry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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He had lived a life without being aware of species loyalty, partly because at no time after he was fifteen had he been confident of living for long.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The hero<\/strong> of Eddie\u2019s Boy<\/a><\/em> by Thomas Perry calls himself Michael Schaeffer, but that\u2019s not his real name. As a teenager, he was adopted by a man named Eddie, a butcher. It turned out Eddie was a butcher in more ways than one \u2013 he carried on a profitable sideline as a professional killer for organized crime. Eddie began teaching Michael that trade, discovering that the boy had a natural gift for it. He\u2019s a born fighter and marksman. After Eddie was gone, Michael did well as a freelancer, killing bad men for the highest bidder, until one gangster double-crossed him. Michael matter-of-factly set that wise guy up for a murder rap, then left the country. Now he\u2019s happily married to a British noblewoman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except that, from time to time, somebody recognizes his face. The word gets back to the U.S., and somebody comes to kill Michael. Then he has to take care of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this fourth installment in the Butcher\u2019s Boy <\/em>series, men have shown up at Michael\u2019s English home, to kill him and his wife. He handles them, but his wife persuades him to try disappearing instead of retaliating, just this once. He tries getting lost in Australia, but that doesn\u2019t work out. He\u2019ll have to go back to the states, find out who wants him dead, and neutralize them as usual. He has a simple, straightforward method of investigation \u2013 he kills men, then studies the reactions of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eddie\u2019s Boy <\/em>was a well-written book. It kept me fascinated, and moved right along. But I was uneasy with it. When I was younger, I got a lot of vicarious pleasure out of stories about remorseless killers. In my old age, I\u2019ve grown more scrupulous. And I\u2019ve come to believe that no one except a sociopath (see last night\u2019s review) can kill a human without suffering some kind of trauma. So the character of Michael Schaeffer seems a little unrealistic to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the story\u2019s great. Cautions for mature content.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He had lived a life without being aware of species loyalty, partly because at no time after he was fifteen had he been confident of living for long. The hero of Eddie\u2019s Boy by Thomas Perry calls himself Michael Schaeffer, but that\u2019s not his real name. As a teenager, he was adopted by a man … Continue reading ‘Eddie’s Boy,’ by Thomas Perry<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[5720,5721,5719,5718],"class_list":["post-21186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-eddies-boy","tag-michael-schaeffer","tag-the-butchers-boy","tag-thomas-perry"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21189,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21186\/revisions\/21189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}