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Death in the Face: A Hector Lassiter novel (Hector Lassiter Series Book 9) Kindle Edition

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

Ian Fleming and Hector Lassiter: Novelists, ex-spies and, at last, lions in winter.

It’s 1963, and the future isn’t what it used to be. Lassiter senses the culture is slowly but surely shouldering him aside. Yet his friend Ian stands on the verge of unimaginable success as his long-running series of James Bond novels at last makes its way to the Silver Screen.

A dying man, Ian finds it harder to live the high-life necessary to feed his 007 page-turners, but the ex-spymaster pines for a last grand adventure. As Hector follows Ian on a research trip to Japan for his next Bond novel, You Only Live Twice, then onto Istanbul for the filming of From Russia with Love, he discovers Fleming is secretly determined to right their one shared intelligence failure: “Operation Flea” — the key to a bio-weapon of terrifying scope that could bring Britain and America to their knees.

With cameos by Sean Connery, Robert Shaw, and the death-obsessed Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima, Craig McDonald again deftly mixes fact and fiction for a darkly seductive historical romp through the mid-20th Century.

This is the penultimate Hector Lassiter literary thriller in the Edgar/Anthony-awards nominated series BookPage declared “wildly inventive” and The Chicago Tribune calls “most unusual, and readable crime fiction to come along in years.”

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in 1962, McDonald's fine ninth Hector Lassiter novel (after Print the Legend) takes the 62-year-old writer and an old friend of his, 54-year-old Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond), to Japan. Ostensibly, Fleming is to do research for an Asian-set 007 novel, and Lassiter is covering Fleming's trip for Playboy magazine. In fact, the pair are on a mission to secure the secret plans made by the Japanese in WWII for a devastating biological weapon. Both men formerly performed intelligence duties, including an attempt, during Operation Flea, to recover the plans immediately after the war. McDonald pays frequent homage to Fleming and his novels, while Lassiter, like an aging James Bond, foils assassins and follows a trail that leads from Japan to Turkey; he even uses a Bond-like gadget to great effect. A brief coda sets the stage for the next and, unfortunately, last Lassiter novel, Three Chords and the Truth. (Oct.)\n

Review

"Set in 1962, McDonald's fine ninth Hector Lassiter novel takes the 62-year-old writer and an old friend of his, 54-year-old Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond), to Japan... McDonald pays frequent homage to Fleming and his novels, while Lassiter, like an aging James Bond, foils assassins and follows a trail that leads from Japan to Turkey"--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

"Lassiter and Ian Fleming team up for one last international caper to 'live what they write and write what they live.' And if you can deliver an audio version narrated by Tom Stechshulte, I'll never ask for another thing again ever."--KAITE MEDIATORE STOVER, BOOKLIST

"Lassiter hasn't lost a step. McDonald's Lassiter stories represent a sorely needed throwback to ultra-hard-boiled adventure tales. The series...hangs together as a multi-volume biography of the greatest fictional pulp writer ever created."--THE RAP SHEET

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01632Y4JQ
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Betimes Books; 1st edition (October 21, 2015)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 21, 2015
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 685 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 306 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

About the author

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Craig McDonald
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Craig McDonald is an internationally best-selling novelist. His critically acclaimed Hector Lassiter series includes "Head Games," which was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Gumshoe and Crimespree Magazine awards for best first novel. It was also released as a graphic novel by First Second Books.

Other Lassiter novels include "One True Sentence," "Forever's Just Pretend," "Toros & Torsos," "The Great Pretender," "Roll the Credits," "The Running Kind," "Print the Legend," "Death In The Face" and "Three Chords & the Truth."

A standalone thriller about illegal immigration, "El Gavilan," was published in autumn 2011 to a Publishers Weekly starred review and was selected for many year's best lists.

He is also an award-winning journalist and has published two volumes of author interviews, "Art in the Blood" and "Rogue Males."

In 2022, he launched a new series, this one featuring pulp magazine-style heroine Zana O'Savin in a pastiche of classic pulp fiction heroes such as Doc Savage and The Shadow. These include "The Blood Ogre," "The Mothman Menace," and "The Death Killers."

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
12 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2016
    This is the first book I've read by Craig McDonald; it was provided to me free by the author for an honest review.
    We're transported back in this story, not merely to the early Sixties and the months following the Cuban Missile crisis, but right slap-bang into the action with the characters themselves who helped make the decade what it was. Fleming, Broccoli, Connery, Shaw and many others appear in this maelstrom of death and intrigue. You may struggle to find Hector Lassiter pictured on a red carpet anywhere, but all the rest of the cast seemed to fit the profile. The plot is complex; with sex and violence scattered liberally across the page, together with references to Hemingway and Kerouac et al; any more name-dropping and it might have become boring. Somehow McDonald avoids the precipice and through the Malboro smoke-rings and above the clink of cocktail glasses there lies a thriller that demands to be read through at one sitting. The ideal companion for a long train journey; the Orient Express perhaps?
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2016
    Smart funny sexy, well written , unusual,,exciting...any laudatory adjective you can think of applies. The penultimate book in the Hector Lassiter series , this one involves Ian Fleming with cameos by Sean Connery ad Cubby Broccoli even! You have to know something about twentieth century culture to enjoy these books but , if you do, you will have a wonderful time.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2016
    Craig McDonald has an excellent publicist. He (and his characters) associate themselves with great names, authors and artists in 20th-century mystery, thriller, and film. In his latest novel, Death in the Face, the eleventh in the Hector Lassiter series, the hero (now 62 years old in 1962) embarks with his buddy Ian Fleming to retrieve a trunk of old clothes and documents presumably left in Japan by his deceased first wife, Brinke Devlin. Gradually revealed to Hector and the reader is the fact that a microfilm containing Imperial Japan’s formula for a deadly weapon of mass destruction, guaranteed to sterilize any living thing—including plants, has also found its way into the trunk. Action begins with a violent storm as the plane takes off. Secret agents in sheep’s clothing surround Hector’s first-class seat, including beautiful Haven Branch, who reminds Hector of his lost Brinke. We discover bit by bit for whom they work and how secret, while corpses drop along the way. Hector barely escapes and/or commits murders by poison, bomb, a frenzy of 15-foot crocodiles, a sulphurous volcanic pool, gunshot, and more, while he battles the Black Dragon Club (Kokuryu-Kurabu) and enjoys two passionate love affairs. He returns home, yes, tired and jaded, with a small memento of his dead wife.
    Mr. McDonald not only weaves into his plot all writers, film directors, actors, and international political figures of note, he also supplies the brand names of the best liquors, wines, and cigarettes, in which all characters copiously indulge. Any reader of this thriller will learn who was who in the last century. His plot gets bogged down at times in stilted conversations with Fleming and other Brits, and the fight scenes do stretch the imagination, though they succeed in keeping the reader on the edge of his/her seat.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2017
    I just can't get enough of Hector Lassiter! Each story keeps getting better.
  • Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2016
    I loved traveling with author Hector Lassiter, his fellow friend Ian Fleming, and and his devastating companion along the way, Haven Branch. Felt like I was right there with them on the planes and trains and in the restaurants, cafes and clubs. Combining writing, spying, and secret lives was perfectly executed and totally believable. Returning to Japan to claim his dead wife's final writings, Hector is caught up in a conspiracy he can't avoid. Once more the unlikely hero is called on to save the world, and by god, he'll do it or die trying. He's not quite a James Bond type, but he's cut from a similar cloth. Smart, witty, resourceful and a lady's man, even in his 60s, you have to admire his style. Great dialogue, good plot, and just enough neurotic angst to sound like a real author. Plenty of fast-paced action, dangerous villains, good whiskey, and humorous characters. I haven't read the other Hector Lassiter tomes, but I think I'll have to get started on them now. With Ian Fleming as his muse, Craig McDonald gives us more of the Bond flavor in this period novel without being a parody. Loved it, can't believe now that I've found him, there's only one more novel to come. But then, I've got all the previous ones to enjoy. ~Sandy Penny, Founder, SweetMysteryBooks.com
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