The Inquisitor

by Mark Allen Smith, Henry Holt and Co., April, 2012

...a perfect airplane read

The mysterious Geiger is in the Information Retrieval business.  He can tell if someone is lying and has numerous psychological techniques that force his targets to reveal the information that they are hiding.  In great demand by big business and the government Geiger has no shortage of work.  Most in his line of work use physical torture but not him.  He is an enigmatic character.  He arrived in NYC on a bus with little memory of his early life.  He is distant, antisocial and oddly sympathetic as a character.  He has only one friend, Harry his sidekick and business partner.  In his informational retrieval business his only rule is that he will not work with children. A client arrives with a last minute change; instead of the man Geiger is to question his young son is presented for questioning.  Unexpectedly Geiger takes the boy under his protection and attempts to keep him safe from the bad guys.  The story then becomes a cat and mouse thriller as Geiger and Harry try to outwit the bad guys and return the young boy to his mother.

For me this was a quick read.  The violence in the story was considerable and fairly graphic.  The writing style is lean and sparse, no unneeded words used in telling this story.  The plot was straightforward with few unexpected twists but it moved right along.  The main character would remind you of the strong silent types – think Joe Pike in the Robert Crais series – flawed but basically a decent man.  The author reveals some but not all of Geiger’s back-story.  I am sure that we’ll see more of Geiger and the much more human Harry.  I’ll read the next book before I give a yea or nay on this series.  The Inquisitor is a perfect airplane read - doesn't ask much of you and provides some light entertainment.  

I read a copy of this book I borrowed from The Free Library of Philadelphia.