Good writing. The Chicago authenticity is there. Part of the plot is somewhat unbelievable,but good reading.

The book was a gift to my husband, he enjoyed it and gave it a 7 on a scale of 1 - 10.

Jason Palmer is a former soldier. A veteran of Iraq, he returned to Chicago with a less than honorable discharge and no future. He finds out, too late, that his brother is attempting to face down a criminal enterprise. Jason, his nephew, and Elena Cruz, a tough Chicago cop get to the bottom of things, encountering an alliance of corrupt city officals and gangsters.

This is an outstanding chase novel. The characters are extremely engaging. The reltionship between Jason and Elena is delightful (never mind that it develops in an impossibly brief time). The suspense is never ending. Each cliff hanger chapter end is followed by rapid, unexpected developments. The novel explores (painlessly) concepts of duty, a soldier's code of honor, the war in Iraq, and the heartache of parenting. The gang characters are chilling as well as engaging.
This is an outstanding effort. I strongly recommend the book and Sankey's earlier stand alone,"The Blalde Itself."

Continuity - not a problem because it does not exist in this book. Flashbacks are confusing. Grover Gardner is the narrator for the audio book and is one of the best 'Readers" in the biz and he is the reason the audio book is palatable. The story jumps around, but when it is steady and in 'present day,' the excitement abounds and then another flashback - ebb and flow. Too many side stories - you just get to know who one character is and then there are several more and you try to keep track and hope you still remember him/her and what's going on so you can appreciate each story's climax/ending - that is if that ever happens. Audio Renaissance is the publisher for the audio version and demonstrates great use of background music in all the right places and Gardner, as always, is excellent. I would not bother trying to read the book and would not purchase the audio book. But if your local library has "At the City's Edge" on CD, you might want to check it out and give it a listen. I know I want to try and read or listen to another Sakey book - I haven't written him off just yet.

As most of the reviewers on this site have stated, I really enjoyed The Blade Itself. I saw that Sakey had a new book at the store, and was excited to get started with a fun story.

I think that the plot is primarily what brought this story down. That and the manner in which the chapters jump from one character to the next in a jerky fashion. I didn't pay exact attention, but for sure, Sakey manages to jump into the persona's of at least five or six characters. By doing this along with leaving each chapter in a moment of suspense or expectation, you are left wanting to rush through the next few pages until you are once again on the thread you just left. Also Sakey has a habbit of throwing in two or three page flashbacks that really have no redeeming value for the story.

So now that I have trashed one aspect of the writing style, I have to go into what really bothered me. First of all, the characters here are very forced. Sakey pulls out a burnt out soldier from Iraq, a man with a mission to help young gang kids find a road towards redemption, a female cop with the entire Chicago PD out on her case, and several gang members. I did not feel that Sakey related to any of these characters. They came across as thin and uninspired.

The story itself is out of left field, I wont give away any details because they dont become 100% clear for half the book, but its so totally silly that I lost faith in the story the further I read. The characters are not real, the story is silly, and the writing in my opinion time and again feels out of place because Sakey is trying to take over personalities that he does not understand fully.

I would stay away from this book. I think Sakey has a bright future in front of himself, but this will be one of the stories that will fall wayside and be forgotten quickly.

After the initial opening action scene, this book rapidly deteriorates into cliched situations and characters. The woman cop who is a great detective but who's been relegated to duty no one wants; the saintly but doomed brother (or father or best friend); the child in jeopardy; the protagonist who realizes too late the value of close relationships and who also likes to flirt with violence -- I'm pretty sure I've read all of these characters before and in similar settings and situations. The biggest disappointment for me is that the promising nature of the writing in author's first book, THE BLADE ITSELF, is not fulfilled or even furthered in this book.

But I remember a budding young author named Michael Koryta once saying that the second book was the hardest for him to write, after having had so much praise for his first book that a reader's expectations, as well as the writer's own expectations, made for incredible stress as he tried to produce the second book. I do know that Koryta's third book fulfilled every hope I had for his work, and I will hope the same holds true for Sakey.

Jason Palmer found his reason for being by being a soldier. Then, one mistake later, he was ultimately out and on his way back home to Chicago. There he finds plenty of booze and one night stands with women in a determined effort, if not to kill himself, to at least keep the demon within under some semblance of control. That is until his brother Michael is murdered and the bar he owned destroyed to cover the crime as well as to serve as a warning to others.

But, the killers made two mistakes. They didn't kill Jason Palmer when they had the chance before he was aware that anything was wrong. They also failed to kill Billy, Michael's son, who at ten years old is amazingly smart and together and can easily identify the killers. The vulnerability of a child is almost always a reason for somebody to turn his or her life around and it certainly is here as Billy gives Jason a reason to put down the bottle and begin to fight back against the enemy within as well as the real enemies arrayed against his family and friends. It's easy to go to war in Iraq or at home in Chicago when you don't care about living or dying. It is another thing entirely when a child is counting on you to survive.

What sounds like a typical revenge/retaliation story is much, much more in the talented hands and mind of Marcus Sakey who also wrote the powerful novel, "The Blade Itself." Taking classic traditional elements of former gang members trying to do good in the old neighborhood, crooked cops, politicians on the take, and all the rest of it, Marcus Sakey creates a novel that while full of graphic violence is also full of subtle nuance about the human condition. Sakey once again brings his hometown alive whether it is the posh mansions or the ghetto areas and shows readers that the people who live in each have much more in common than most would expect or acknowledge.

The result is a novel that no review will begin to fully explain just how good this book truly is. So, go read it already and if you haven't read "The Blade Itself" read that as well. You won't be disappointed with either stand alone read.

Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2008

I loved Marcus Sakey's first book. His latest is very busy and there are so many plots that I felt it would be better to write two separate books. His characters are very real (too real and frightening) and the whole book was too fast and furious. Disappointing after 'The Blade Itself'. I would rather have ordered it from the library, as it was not worth buying.

At The City's Edge, Sakey's second novel, is a worthy successor to his excellent debut book, The Blade Itself. His writing style is one that will keep you wanting to read "just one more page" in order to see what happens next. The plot, which is described in depth in some other reviews, is fast-moving and filled with action. These qualities alone made it a book that I'm glad I read and one that I would recommend to you. That being said, however, be aware that At The City's Edge is not without its flaws. I found the dialogue and narrative on several occasions to be "preachy," and I felt that Sakey got a bit carried away with his parallels of being a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan and being "on the streets" of Chicago. These two factors almost caused me to give this book a 3-3 1/2 star rating. Further, while as I said, At The City's Edge has lots of action, I felt a lot of it was predictable; as was the interaction between the main male and female characters.

I'm not sure what I like most about Mr. Sakey's fist two novels: the original story lines, compelling characters, or the non-stop nostalgia I feel when reading about Chicago. As a former resident, Mr. Sakey takes me back to the city that I loved for many years. He has a great ability to make you feel like your right there with his characters.

At the City's Edge is a great follow up to The Blade Itself. Each one of his charaters force you to like them in one way or another whether its the villain or the hero. To many times did I find myself laughing during extremely stressful moments do to Sakey's ability to weave in commical situations and character reactions.

Big fan of this book, looking forward to the next.

As the song goes, "Chicago--my kind of town"--provided you're on the inside, part of the deal, the political cabal or whatever other corruptions define the city. Jason Palmer returns to his native city after nine years as a soldier, having served in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving with less than an honorable discharge. His experience haunts him, leaving him at loose ends. His brother, Michael, owns a bar in a ghetto-like South Side area. He has an eight-year old son.

Michael is active in the community (which is rife not only with poverty but gangs), trying to improve it, clean it up. He is provided with incriminating evidence on a conspiracy involving politicians, cops, businessmen and who knows who else, and is murdered when he fails to divulge the whereabouts of the documents. The boy escapes to Jason's apartment and the ill-prepared uncle takes on the responsibility of protecting the boy, and avenging his brother's death. Along the way, he gets help from a woman police sergeant and a community activist.

The author makes various references to similarities between the war in Iraq and Chicago, which may or may not be a stretch of the imagination, depending on one's view. But corruption is universal, no matter the location. There's enough twists and excitement in the plot to satisfy the most hardened devotee of the genre. This is a thriller to be read and savored.

When his brother is brutally murdered, Iraq war veteran Jason Palmer finds himself protecting his eight-year-old nephew from two ruthless killers with a mysterious agenda, while his Chicago South Side neighborhood erupts in a bloodbath of gang warfare and high-level political corruption. BT.
Though some of the plotting seemed rehashed, I found it quite suspenseful. I liked the writing style because it kept me wanting to read just another page. Overall a good second novel.

marcus sakey's second novel 'at the city's edge' is just as compelling as his first, 'the blade itself'. there is no question but that he can write up a storm. not just excitingly drawn action scenes, a strong sense of chicago (where both books take place), but characters, major and minor, who seem completely believable. as a longtime chicagoan it is distressing to see the problems of a big city (race, drugs, class, gender) so accurately displayed, but i completely approve of realistic portrayals of urban life. these books don't sugar coat the corruption that seems to be endemic to human nature, but they do provide a balanced point of view, showing us the good and bad that exist in society.

Another stay-up-late, page-turner from a deft crime writer that deserves to be on your nightstand.

While his first, "The Blade Itself" will remain my favorite (if you haven't discovered this pulse-pounder already, stop reading this and go add it to your cart pronto), City's Edge gives it a run for its money. Sakey stomped on the gas here in a more ambitious story that gets even more dirt under its fingernails, more complexity in its characters and more stakes that leave a higher body count its wake and your heart leaping from your throat. Throw in some deftly woven social commentary and a villain that sneers with the best of them and you've got one fun book that's head and shoulders above most of his peers.

Marcus Sakey won critical and popular acclaim with THE BLADE ITSELF, his debut novel. His sophomore effort, AT THE CITY'S EDGE, is a gutsy change of pace from its predecessor.

While highlighting Sakey's canny ability for thriller writing, AT THE CITY'S EDGE is at its core a mystery, one that is complex, multilayered and, above all, intriguing. The primary character, as with THE BLADE ITSELF, is the author's beloved Chicago, but his latest book introduces an entirely new and riveting cast of personalities to bounce off of his fast-moving plot.

Chief among them is Jason Palmer, an Iraq war veteran whose discharge "for reasons other than honorable" chafes him internally as he returns to his old neighborhood. Jason realizes immediately that he has only exchanged one war for another when his brother Michael is brutally murdered. A tavern owner and community activist, Michael had been extremely vocal about gang activity in his local area and made a number of dangerous enemies. When he is killed during the torching of his business in front of his young son, Billy, it appears that he is yet another victim of an ongoing and apparently never-ending street war. Billy's description of his father's assailants, however, doesn't quite equate with that conclusion.

Jason doesn't have much time to puzzle it out, because even as they are grieving, he all too quickly learns that the men who killed his brother are now after Billy as well. Jason and Billy find themselves on the run, but Jason wants revenge for his brother's death, even as he discovers that the reasons for Michael's execution are more complicated than he originally thought.

Meanwhile, Elena Cruz, a police officer with Chicago's prestigious Gang Intelligence Unit, is quietly being warned off the case, which she had hoped would redeem her professionally from an earlier error in judgment. Already at a loss as to where to turn for help or which way to go, she forms an uneasy alliance with Jason that is both complicated and made easier by the growing attraction between the two. Almost immediately, however, they find themselves caught between a street gang and the police, along with a shadowy third party whose motives are as shady as they are powerful.

Sakey combines classic whodunit elements with thriller sensibilities to make AT THE CITY'S EDGE a follow-up effort that is the equal of his impressive debut. And for good measure, the author tosses in a tour of Chicago's underbelly that isn't covered in any guidebook. This is one novel that you won't soon forget.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I read Marcus Sakey's 'The Blade Itself' last fall and couldn't wait for his second novel to be published. Finally it's here and it's even better than the first!

Every writing course I ever attended preached 'Write what you know and tell the truth.' What Marcus knows is the pulse of crime and the grittiness of the city down to every detail. But what I appreciate even more is his joy in getting into the heads of his characters and turning their insides out - with incredible truthfulness and psychological insight. Lead character Jason Palmer is conflicted and far from perfect, making his personal journey fascinating and thrilling to follow.

Every page of 'City's Edge' propelled me towards the next - the end of each chapter demanded that I continue. Having just finished this most pleasurable read, I can finally catch up on some sleep until the next time Marcus' words keep me up at night.

I enjoyed Marcus Sakey's debut, THE BLADE ITSELF, so much that I rushed out and read his second book without thinking twice. But I must admit I was pretty disappointed with his sophomore effort.

AT THE CITY'S EDGE is well written (Sakey definitely knows how to write forceful, punchy prose) but the story has very little originality. In fact, most of the scenes and situations in this novel are recycled from other books and TV shows I have either read or seen. Jason Palmer, the tortured Iraq war veteran with a dark secret he refuses to discuss, is the type of character I've seen before in countless books.

The same thing could be said about Elena Cruz, the tough Latina cop who makes the mistake of sleeping with one of her male superiors. Hey, what are the chances that Jason and Elena fall for each other? Close to certain, I would say. It also doesn't help that most of the other supporting characters are stereotypes, straight from central casting, including the little boy that Jason must bond with by the end of the story.

The actual plot itself, about gang warfare and police/political corruption, is pretty much by-the-numbers stuff and unfolds predictably. Sakey tries to make some legitimate points about gang life in the inner city, but he isn't particularly subtle about how he makes his points, which makes parts of AT THE CITY'S EDGE seem rather heavy-handed.

In short, I was disappointed with this effort. I think Sakey is a very talented writer, but I hope his next novel contains a more inspired storyline than what I found here.

I have yet to finish the book, but each chapter makes it harder and harder to put it down. Sakey ability to describe the neighborhoods of Chicago and their landscapes and personalities is uncanny. Then there are his characters, characters that share the same complexities of all of us, which makes them more human than most writers are capable of creating. I am waiting for the day to Sakey on the bestsellers list!

Sakey showed great promise with last year's "The Blade Itself." His follow-up -- the tale of a returned Iraq War veteran who finds himself embroiled in a similar land grab scheme in Chicago -- is a worthy successor that demonstrates his rapidly growing command of language and story form.

I actually liked this one better than his very good debut. It's a richer, more complex and nuanced tale with a very incisive central metaphor. While it's completely effective as a straight-ahead crime thriller, there's more at work beneath the surface for those who enjoy keeping an eye out for that sort of thing.

Looking forward to more from this accomplished young author.

A fine piece of writing with a complex and conflicted protagonist in war-veteran Jason Palmer, powerfully rendered Chicago settings, a colorful and engaging mix of secondary characters, a conspiracy worthy of any paranoid's worst fears, and a plot-line that redefines unpredictable.

A novel that's both entertaining and ambitious. Highly recommended.

At City's Edge was fantastic! This guy writes like cliffhangers and verbs are the same thing--you just keep wanting to get to the next bit.

I read the whole thing in one sitting.

Just awesome!