Stolen Souls

A Jack Lennon Investigation

By: Stuart Neville

Narrated by: Gerard Doyle

Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

Galya Petrova travels to Ireland on a promise that she will work for a nice Russian family, teaching their children English. Instead, she is dragged into the world of modern slavery, sold to a Belfast brothel, and held there against her will.

She escapes at a terrible cost - the slaying of one of her captors - and takes refuge with a man who offers his help. As the traffickers she fled scour the city for her, seeking revenge for their fallen comrade, Galya faces an even greater danger: her savior is not what he seems. She is not the first trafficked girl to have crossed his threshold, and she must fight to avoid their fate.

Detective Inspector Jack Lennon wants a quiet Christmas with his daughter, but when an apparent turf war between rival gangs leaves bodies across the city, he knows he won't get it. As he digs deeper into the case, he realizes an escaped prostitute is the cause of the violence, and soon he is locked in a deadly race with two very different killers.

Solve another case with Jack Lennon.

©2011 Stuart Neville (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Neville slowly ratchets up the tension—and the violence—until each page practically twangs with suspense." (Publishers Weekly)

"Vivid characters and atmosphere.... ‘The gray and the rain and the hate’ of Lennon’s Belfast make these streets among the very meanest in the genre." (Booklist)

Lovelier the second time around

I had the first book in this series and wasn't terribly impressed. While the characterization was excellent, and continued to be in this second title, I felt the constant focus on the assassin's brutality unnecessary.

In this second go-round, however, the violence, while present, isn't the overwhelming element it was before. Here, the emphasis is on the characters, as it should be, and the pacing is much better for it. Overall, this was a much more engaging story, in my opinion, and makes it more likely I'll be acquiring more of Mr. Neville's work.

Neville Nail Biter

Stuart Neville continues to entertain with his third Belfast opus. If you haven't listened to Ghosts Of Belfast or Collusion, check them out as they're also read by the superlative Gerard Doyle. Best series of crime fiction going. Don't miss it.

Masterful narration

Neville’s writing is pure fun. And Doyle’s mastery of accents, tone and pitch is just superb. A great listen.

Another good one from Neville

This started out slowly for me. I like Jack and there was always the overhanging issue of his daughter and whether he would keep his promises to her. This kept me on the edge of my seat more so than the investigation and the stories involved in that.

The synopsis is available elsewhere. I enjoy the author's style and the settings play a big part in this series. The narration is excellent and that helped get me through the slow parts at the beginning.

The end is a bit of a cliffhanger but I think I need something lighter after reading these three books in a row. I'll come back to book 4 shortly.

Jack Lennon keeps piling up foes

The third book in Stuart Neville's Jack Lennon series. The series is starting accumulate a cast of recurring characters and a history that has to be revisited in each new volume, as ongoing series are wont to do, but so far it hasn't gotten to the "cozy" level of the detective series that run for a dozen volumes.

Jack Lennon, following the events of Collusion, is on his boss's bad list, which means he's constantly getting mandatory night and weekend shifts, called in unexpectedly at the most inconvenient times, all to disrupt his personal life and make him miserable enough to quit or transfer elsewhere, or so they hope. But he's too stubborn to do that, plus he doesn't really have anywhere to go. So one dreary Christmas when he's been forced to leave his daughter with his new girlfriend, he gets a call involving an escaped prostitute, a beaten cop, and a case that drags him into Belfast's seedy underworld, and the collusion with law enforcement we are all too familiar with.

The MacGuffin of this book is Galya Petrova, a young girl trafficked from the Ukraine who kills one of her captors and escapes. This earns her the enmity of the brother of the man she killed, who runs the trafficking ring, but is in fact, despite being a crime lord coke-fiend, a scared little boy whenever his momma calls. His mother, the hard woman who brought him up in the world of organized crime and trafficking women, demands he kill the whore who killed his brother. So Galya is a marked woman. Unfortunately, making matters worse, the first man she comes across, who offers to help her, turns out to be a serial killer.

And that's where Detective Lennon steps into it, trying to find Galya before either her former "employer's" killers do or her captor makes her into another set of keepsakes to bury under his floorboards. Complicating Lennon's life is the continual corruption of his superiors, and a threatening phone call from his old friend the Traveller.

Galya's story wraps up tidily - perhaps a bit too tidily - while Lennon naturally ends the book in even worse shape. I've been enjoying this series quite a lot, as it hasn't run out of steam yet and I'm curious to see whether it will come to a resolution or if Jack Lennon will just keep plugging along as the one honest if imperfect cop in the Belfast police force.

Fast, suspenseful and rich

Loved it. Loved the narrator. Loved it so much I'm going to buy all the Stuart Neville books narrated by Gerard Doyle. Fast paced. suspenseful yet richly developed.