Thomas Perry (1) (1947–2025)

The old man in question, only “old in the way a seven-foot rattlesnake was old,” has been hiding in plain sight for thirty-five years, since he reclaimed 20 million dollars that a Libyan warlord took from the U.S. Government without passing it on to the rebel group they supported to overthrow Gaddafi.

The former intelligence operator spent his life since then hiding from the Libyans and the U.S. government. He’s extremely careful and crafty and has gone to extraordinary lengths to show more remain untraceable to keep himself and his family safe, but technology has caught up with him and he’s had to kill several Libyans sent to kill him.

He has several identities fully prepared and even an apartment in another country waiting. He finds a traveling companion, Zoe, who has a secret reason to run herself. They use each other for cover and companionship. There’s a government contractor after him who seems to be pulling for the old man at times.

A well-paced novel, a true thriller, almost retro in nature, but up-to-date regarding technology and an attitude of distrust toward intelligence agencies and their motives. show less

The master of the hunt-and-hide/hunt-and-evade suspense thriller returns.

Accusing Thomas Perry of writing too many of the same kind of book is like accusing Johann Sebastian Bach of writing too many cantatas (200+). When the quality is that high and even improves over time there is no downside. You simply enjoy the story and admire the craft.

Even in what can be viewed as a template formula, Perry still sets himself challenges that are outside of the box of the format. In this case, his show more hunted protagonist is a 60-year-old man, albeit one with military intelligence/special ops training in his past. The man's allies are his two dogs and a few unlikely partners he meets on the way (I'm being intentionally vague here so as not to release any spoilers). Due to circumstances outside of his control in the past the man has had to avoid the authorities and is even forced to go on the run at a late stage of his life. The opposition hunters are led by a younger version of himself who is ordered by nefarious forces to track the old man down. The set-up is in place and the game is afoot, so settle back and enjoy.

I've been critical of a few recent Thomas Perry novels e.g. "The Boyfriend" but generally his quality has always remained high e.g."Forty Thieves". With "The Old Man" I would go so far as to say he has written one of his best ever. show less

It’s hard to explain why an author sometimes drops off your radar for decades before you come back to them. And that happens to me sometimes even with a writer as good as Thomas Perry, someone whose novels I enjoyed reading and was impressed by before not picking up another one for about thirty years. Thankfully, Perry’s 2017 novel The Old Man finally caught my eye long enough for those good memories to kick back in long enough for me to pick up the book for a closer look.

I was hooked show more from the first paragraph:

“An old man should have a dog.” Dan Chase’s daughter had told him that ten years ago, after his wife died. The part that surprised him was the term “old man.” He had just turned fifty then. But he supposed she was only giving him advance notice, time to get used to the idea and find a suitable dog. After a man’s wife died, he had to do something not to die too.

Dan Chase sounds like a family man at loose ends, one whose daughter is worried about his emotional health, and based on this paragraph you might think that you’ve picked up a tearjerker, one of those books that punch all the right buttons for older readers looking for stories about people like themselves. Well, you would be wrong; this is a Thomas Perry novel, after all, and all kinds of hell are about to break loose.

Dan Chase has a past. Thirty-five years ago, as a young army intelligence offer, Dan was sent to Libya to deliver several million dollars to an intermediary tasked with getting those funds to a rebel army badly in need of U.S. assistance. But as it turned out, that man was not interesting in giving up one dime of the money to help anyone but himself, so Dan risked his life by going back into Libya to reclaim the money and return it to the government. Unfortunately for Dan, his superiors did not want anyone to learn just how badly the mission had gone, so they decided to cover their own bad judgement by branding Dan a thief and a traitor to his country. They wanted him dead.

By now Dan Chase (one of the old man’s many aliases) has been hiding and/or on the run for close to four decades. He lives in Vermont with not one, but two, big dogs where he appears to be nothing more than a typical retiree enjoying his daughter and grandsons. As far as that goes, that’s who he is. But Dan Chase has never let his guard down, so when two Libyan assassins show up at his house one night, they don’t stand much of a chance against him and his dogs.

But the chase is on again, and Dan knows that it’s not just the Libyans after him. His own government, to one degree or another, is still smack dab in the middle of it all.

Bottom Line: The Old Man is a first rate thriller that moves the reader from point A to point Z in thrilling fashion as the people chasing our hero get closer and closer to catching him. But it is much more than that. Perry takes the time to develop several memorable characters along the way while detailing the evolving relationships these characters have with Chase. The Old Man is as close to a character-driven thriller as can be written without slowing down the basic premise of the story. I’m excited now to go back and read all those Thomas Perry books I’ve missed over the years…money in the bank. show less

I quite liked the first book im the series but i found this boring and disjointed and wildly sexist (which I am generally cool with in books, especially those written in the 20th century, but this was serially and outlandishly offensive). I dnf'ed at 37%. There is this scene where a judge meets Jane (who is a prisoner at this moment and who was recently beaten up and the results of that battery are visible on her face) and notes that she looks like a model, all angular and cool but that he show more prefers softer plainer women like his late wife and like the guard who has escorted Jane from the jail to his chambers. This is supposed to make us like the judge, I think. Ew! This is a judge, trying to get the information he needs to decide the fate of an 8-year-old boy and he is thinking about the fuckability of the officer present in her official capacity and the prisoner before him. No. There is plenty more toxic sludge where that came from, and also general right-wing crap. There is a reference to someone who gets a life sentence for murder but will only serve 5 or 6 years because of the broken system. It is that kind of completely wrong "criminals are roaming the streets" conspiracy theory crap that led us to our current prison industrial complex. In most states, one cannot come up for parole for a life sentence until they have served at least 25 years (not counting compassionate release when someone is dying.)

The only way I was finishing this was as a hate read, and I don't have time for those. show less