The Old Man by Thomas Perry

 

This is another novelist I read and enjoyed something by, and figured I'd grab something else--an advantage of doing most of my reading these days from the local public libraries is that doing something like this doesn't cost me any money--and this turned out to be another novel well worth reading. Perry does seem to have a bit of a tendency toward prose that isn't so much "invisible" (an overrated ideal, I think) as understated, almost to the point of mundanity. There are no histrionics here, no linguistic fireworks, just solid sentences that turn into solid paragraphs that turn into solid chapters. The primary character here is perhaps a touch more ruthless than many readers will prefer, but his choice at the end is completely in-character (and might not be completely irrevocable); thinking about it, it seems as though plausibly the actual protagonist is the character most readers will think of as the antagonist, who only starts getting POV chapters about halfway through the novel: He's the character who changes most, after all. I am again impressed.