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John Barlow
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Hope Road (John Ray / LS9 crime thrillers Book 1) Kindle Edition

by John Barlow (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 1,400 ratings
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A gripping read... A fascinating study in dark and evil... The stuff of Great British grit and dark, dark humour … Barlow provides plenty of twists and turns before the truth is revealed. But what is most enjoyable about Barlow's writing isn't his story archs or plotting, but his characters, dialogue and sense of place... Beautifully cinematic… far more cinematic than a McDermid or a Rankin.
Crimefictionlover.com

Barlow throws in plenty of twists before everything is untangled, since of course nothing in the case is exactly what it seems to be, and he spins the yarn in fast-paced, very readable prose. He also does a good job with the setting, the English city of Leeds, and made me feel like I'd been there. HOPE ROAD is a fine novel, the first in a series, and I look forward to reading the others.
Rough Edges

HOPE ROAD: a crime thriller - You can't change your past. But what about your future?

John Ray, son of crime boss Antonio 'Tony' Ray, is the straight one of the family. With a successful business and a lifestyle to match, he wants nothing to do with his father's criminal world. But what does that world want with him?

A young prostitute is found dead in John's car, and Freddy Metcalfe, his best friend and employee, is framed for her death. Freddy denies everything but it's an open and shut case: he's going down for murder. John sets out to find the real killer.

But things get complicated. A stash of counterfeit money was also found in John's car, and the police seem more interested in that than in the dead girl. Then Lanny Bride turns up; one of the north's most ruthless criminals (and an old friend of the Ray family), Lanny is desperate to know who killed the girl. But why? Meanwhile, Freddy is too scared to talk to anyone, even his lawyer.

John's police detective girlfriend, Denise Danson, has been warned off the case by her boss. But she doesn't believe Freddy is guilty, and secretly helps John look for the murderer. The problem, though, is that uncovering the shocking truth about the girl's death will force John to confront his own criminal past and risk destroying his future, as well as losing the only woman he's ever loved.

A novel set in Leeds, this is the first crime-mystery in the LS9 series.

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  1. Book 1 of 3
    John Ray / LS9 crime thrillers
  2. Print length
    353 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  5. Publication date
    January 2, 2014
  6. File size
    2279 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
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  9. Enhanced typesetting
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Crime thriller fans, this novel is a must read.
Jersey Girl Book Reviews

I can't wait for the next book. Hope Road is a fast-paced, exciting novel.
Preferred Reading

A gripping read... A fascinating study in dark and evil... The stuff of Great British grit and dark, dark humour... Beautifully cinematic... far more cinematic than a McDermid or a Rankin.
Crimefictionlover.com

Barlow throws in plenty of twists... he spins the yarn in fast-paced, very readable prose. HOPE ROAD is a fine novel, the first in a series, and I look forward to reading the others.
Rough Edges

This book was fantastic!! A wonderful who-done-it!! I am looking forward to the next book in this series.
2ReadOrNot2Read

I loved the story. Little twists and turns and an ending I did not expect.
Booketta

A wonderful read which I highly recommend. [...] An engrossing story with fascinating and complex characters. The setting is wonderfully portrayed. A tremendously exciting debut and I look forward to more.
The Guy with the Glasses

Very highly recommended. Exactly the kind of book I love. And I did love it.
Meeka's Mind

John [Ray] is a great character.
Beth Kemp

I enjoyed it tremendously.
Not the Baseball Pitcher

I don't know when I've read anything quite so visual. Hope Road would make a great [TV] program.
Letters from Hill Farm

A pretty gripping story. The description of the city was great too.
Click's Clan

An intriguing murder mystery from start to finish.
Welcome to Tweedling

You'll be curious to find out where Barlow plans to take John Ray in upcoming installments.
Nights and Weekends

This is an intriguing beginning for author John Barlow [...] A strong start.
His Futile Preoccupations

Looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Today I Did This For Me

From the Author

I've been thinking about this book for years. Counterfeit banknotes figure prominently in the secondary plot of HOPE ROAD. I've always been fascinated by fake money. How do you spend it safely? Is it really such a bad thing to print your own money (governments do it all the time!). Finally, is there a way of 'passing on' large quantities of fake banknotes without causing financial harm to anyone? In other words, is there a perfect crime with counterfeit money? I think I've come pretty close...

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B006LWJ75K
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Storm Books (January 2, 2014)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 2, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2279 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 353 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.9 3.9 out of 5 stars 1,400 ratings

About the author

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John Barlow

John Barlow

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John Barlow's fiction and non-fiction has been published by HarperCollins/William Morrow, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 4th Estate and various others in the UK, US, Australia, Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland.

His new crime series features English-Sicilian detective JOE ROMANO, and is set in the north of England. The first novel in the series is RIGHT TO KILL (2021) and the second is TO THE GRAVE (2022), both published by HQ/HarperCollins.

John was born in the village of Gomersal, West Yorkshire, England, in 1967. After leaving school he worked as a cabaret musician for several years, then read English Literature at Cambridge University, followed by a PhD in Language Acquisition at Hull University. He worked as a university teacher until 2004, then moved to Spain to write full-time. He currently lives in the Galician city of A Coruna.

Apart from writing fiction, he has works as a ghost writer, journalist and translator. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penthouse, Departures Magazine and The Big Issue, and was a feature writer for the award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.

John's first published work, the novella ‘Eating Mammals’, won the Paris Review's Discovery (Plimpton) Prize in 2002. He went on to publish a collection of novellas, EATING MAMMALS, the historical novel INTOXICATED, and EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL, a food-travelogue about northern Spain. He then published the off-beat noir novel WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO? and three books in the JOHN RAY/LS9 crime series.

He also worked with the conceptual artists Goldin+Senneby on the HEADLESS project, which took him to Nassau, Bergamo, Oslo, Paris and London, and into the company of Bahamian off-shore bankers, defamation layers, artists, and Martina Navratilova. His writing for the project has been published variously in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and has featured in numerous art shows and galleries around the world. The novel HEADLESS, based on the project, was released in 2016 (Triple Canopy/Sternberg), and features John Barlow as the main character.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars
3.9 out of 5
1,400 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

ACFlory
4.0 out of 5 stars What makes a compelling hero?
Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2012
Verified Purchase
I stumbled across Hope Road in Amazon's 'readers who bought X also bought Y' list, and bought it, hoping only for a few hours of distraction. I was not disappointed. The plot is tight and the book is extremely well written, however the main character, John Ray, was the big surprise.

Right from the beginning, Ray exudes the kind of charisma that is usually reserved for sexy villains, yet he is not stereotypically handsome. He is described as a big man in his forties with a shock of black hair, and a physical 'presence', but he is not a James Bond, although it seems he is good in bed. Nor is he one of those angst-ridden types who introspect ad nauseum.

So what is it about John Ray that makes him so compelling? I suspect the answer lies in his potential to be bad. He appears to be a solid citizen, but as the sole, surviving son of a retired crime lord, with a dead girl in his car, along with 50,000 pounds of counterfeit bills, you can't help feeling suspicious. The police certainly are. But nothing is quite what it seems, and solving this murder mystery is one treat you should not miss.

Very highly recommended.
 Hope Road (1st John Ray mystery)
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B. Burke
5.0 out of 5 stars Great intro to a new series
Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2012
Verified Purchase
John Barlow hits on all cylinders in his newest thriller, Hope Road. Mystery, espionage, love, loyalty, betrayal, and a host of other themes wend their way through this book in a fast-paced, complex story. But what really sets it apart is Barlow's deft development of the central figure. This psychological study intertwined with the crime story plot makes for a different kind of novel.

The plot revolves around John Ray, the "prodigal son" of crime boss Tony Ray, who has returned home to run his dad's used car business. He stepped in when his brother was murdered, in a case that was never solved, but the motive of which was attributed to the same kind of seamy lifestyle of his father. Everybody thinks that John Ray has always been different--the golden boy, smart enough to get away, to shun a life of crime. John Ray himself shows the reader how different he really is.

But the past is hard to escape, and family ties leave a shadow of doubt. Freddy, one of John's employees, is arrested for murdering a prostitute, whose body is found in the trunk of one of John's cars along with a bundle of counterfeit money. The police see it as an open-and-shut case, so it's up to John Ray not only to prove that Freddy is innocent, but also to verify to one and all that his own business is legitimate, that he's not continuing in his father's footsteps. Barlow seems to get inside John Ray's head so well that the reader connects and understands what makes him tick. Part of that is Denise Danson, the police detective he's been dating and is in love with. But will his actions in trying to clear Freddy cause Detective Danson to sever all ties?

Set in Leeds, the dialogue and the atmosphere are not so British as to distract an American reader. That makes for seamless understanding of the action, which is plentiful. The subplots are woven in adeptly, creating a finely meshed web. There are plenty of surprises in the final chapters, making this well-wrought story that much more interesting.

As this is the first of a nine-book series, I am looking forward to subsequent installments. No indication whether we'll see John Ray and cohorts again, or whether Barlow's got other avenues to explore in the series, but it's a sure bet the series will be worth reading.
38 people found this helpful
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M. Lewis
3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting, somewhat unusual, and very complicated crime story
Reviewed in the United States on December 21, 2012
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It took me a while to get into this book, but once in, I liked it and read it straight through, in one long read. As others have pointed out, the main character, John Ray, is a complicated, appealing man, but it takes the whole story to find out who and what he really is. Even at the end of the story, I was not 100% sure that I knew the "real" John Ray. It was unclear to him, and to the reader, through most of the book, what really happened and why. We follow along with John Ray (and a cast of unusual characters) as he tries to figure out "whodunnit". It's personal - his best friend is the jailed suspect in this gruesome murder case and his current girlfriend is a cop in the unit assigned to solve this crime.

My main dissatisfaction is the number of British terms used that I wasn't familiar with, but needed to know, in order to understand what was going on; "googling" the term sometimes helped. And there were a few somewhat suddenly appearing, ill-defined characters to keep track of and figure out what their role was and is - in John's past and present.

The reader finds out, in the end, the "who, what, and why", but I was somewhat frustrated as the story unfolded. I found myself using the "search this book" feature on my kindle to go back and reread scenes where the character was introduced, to find out who some characters were, what their relationship was, and now is, to John Ray - and to the crime itself. I'm not sure I really, finally, understand John Ray. I actually read some of the final pages over a couple of times to get a better sense of a couple of characters.

In the end, I still wasn't absolutely sure that I understood who and what John Ray was, is, and will be. The good thing about that is that I WANT to know more about John Ray and will likely read the next book in the series to find out.
39 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Donald Farley
3.0 out of 5 stars Good crime mystery
Reviewed in Canada on January 11, 2017
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John Ray is a mid-forties educated offspring of a crime family with original roots in Spain now established in England with a used car showroom inherited from his father. The business appears to be doing alright with two younger employees, one male and one female. Severe problems occur when the male employee is implicated in the murder of a young girl involved with foreign counterfeiters. Her body is found in one of John's showroom cars. The police immediately suspect John because of his family's known criminal activity. John is currently having a relationship with a female detective on the local force which further complicates matters.

The story moves in a cyclical way to a surprising and unusual ending.

T
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Jim Hawkins
5.0 out of 5 stars Aye up, it's crime but not as we know it.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 10, 2015
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John Barlow is an excellent writer with a penchant for the bizarre. He's explored a man who ate chairs, the Rhubarb Triangle in Yorkshire, and the experience of travelling around Spain - where he lives - attempting to eat every part of the pig.

So I was interested to see what his take on a crime novel would be. As you might expect, this is no ordinary PC Plod story - he comes at it from a variety of angles, with a hero or anti-hero (take your pick) whose profile and history are far from conventional. All your early expectations will be turned upside down as it progresses. He even manages to get Spanish pig into it - which - if you think about it - is a police-like reference!

If you want a run-of-the-mill gumshoe whodunnit, don't bother. But if you want to read something devious and different I highly recommend Hope Road. I'm about to start the sequel with great anticipation.
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Emma
1.0 out of 5 stars Not worth downloading.
Reviewed in Germany on December 4, 2012
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I cannot recommend this book. The writing style was in present tense and quickly became very tiring. "He walks into the room. He sees her coat. He wonders if she will stay long." The entire book was written like that. Sigh. The plot was not interesting either. Not worth downloading.
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Hope Road review
Reviewed in Canada on March 14, 2013
Verified Purchase
This was a great book . I enjoyed it from the beginning to the end. A few editoring errors but not as many as some books. All in all a very good read.
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Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Great crime thriller!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 11, 2012
Verified Purchase
Well-written and well-paced, Hope Road is an entertaining Crime Thriller set in Leeds in the UK. The characters are believable, and the plot twists well - at times predictably, but at other times leaving enough that you won't see it coming! The attention paid to police procedure further lends credibility to the narrative, without being too intrusive. A well-rounded read that I would recommend!
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