The first 200 pages are pretty dang good! I really like when the “good guy” is also a “bad” guy, in this case, an assassin for hire. But chapter 25 seems so unlikely that it kinda killed my buzz. The assassin goes from super tough guy, to tender hearted "nice" guy - really fast! I'd give the first half four stars and the second half one. ( )

This was by far the best book in the trilogy and introduced me to the character of Tina Boyd (who figures in her own Simon Kernick Series). I liked the way Simon merged the two different parts of the story from Dennis's end and Tina's, both taking place in different parts of the world. Dennis as a former policeman is quite a different and intriguing character. It was good how they eventually worked together in the case after an interesting introduction to each other! This book certainly moved along at pace and rounded off the themes across the three books. Plenty of tension and exciting action at the end of the book. I would certain recommend Simon Kernick as a writer! I now look forward to reading the Tina Boyd series. ( )

If you don't like blood and guts, evil and corruption, and cold-blooded murder, then I would not advise you to pick up this book. But if you enjoy exhilarating mystery thrillers, then you're gonna like this one. A quick, easy read, nothing to difficult about it, but with a plotline that will keep the book in your hands until you've finished. Much better than any book of similar type by James Patterson, I found this to be an interesting account of a cop and a cop-turned-hitman who team up. A different look at the world of crime than I had read before, I'm starting to think it way more interesting than the types of stories about the good cop who is always right. 3.5 stars ( )

Really brilliant ( )

Three Cheers – Simon Kernick is back! It’s not so much his new book that elicits the Huzzahs as the fact that he is back on magnificent form with one his best characters, assassin and former policeman Dennis Milne.
It’s not necessary to have read The Business of Dying or A Good Day to Die to enjoy The Payback, but they are recommended reads telling the back-story of Milne and penned before Kernick had his falling off, serving up substandard gimmicky race-against-time potboilers such as Deadline and Severed.
Kernick’s other series hero is Detective Inspector Tina Boyd and, inevitably, she and Milne meet and end up working together, despite the fact he was hired to kill her.
Paul Wise, the sadistic drug dealer and paedophile who murdered Tina’s boyfriend, wants her dead but she is determined to bring him to justice no matter what the cost – even if it means conspiring with wanted killer Dennis Milne, who has his own reasons for wanting to find Wise.
Much of the action takes place in the Philippines as the unlikely couple follows leads and put past ghosts to rest: they track down Tomboy Darke, Milne’s treacherous former business partner, and a lot of loose ends are tidied away.
The story is told from various points of view, including a first person narrator: in the past, readers were usually assured the first person narrator would survive but recently writers have been killing them off with impunity and Kernick, I regret to say, is no exception.
The Payback is a thoroughly enjoyable read, exciting, pacey and satisfying: flawed heroes and unspeakably vile villains alike get their come-uppance. As Tina Boyd concludes “Those who sin always end up paying… And Tina had sinned as well. One day, it would be her turn to pay.” ( )