Gallows Pole by JD Rhoades

Iron Horse is an off the books with no oversight squad taking the fight to the terrorist’s own ground and rules. They chart targets and take out the scum and the scum’s crew mostly by hanging and leaving a tiny iron horse statue. “The Horsemen” have the terrorists running scared.

An incident in Riyadh gets out of hand and the squad’s leader, Colonel Mark Bishop, declares himself a war criminal and sentences himself to a self imposed prison sentence built in rural Virginia.

In the US, a Honduran family, an Arab family, and an Iranian family are all found hanged in an apparent murder-suicide orchestrated by each father, neatly ordered by size . . . and a tiny iron horse is found at each site. 

One of the original Iron Horse squad, Heineman, has gone off the reservation. The FBI has assigned Melissa Saxon’s team to stop the killings, but the word gets to Bishop through his former squad convincing Bishop to end his exile and get back in the game.

Behind the scenes is the shadowy Mr. Campbell who was originally tasked to set up Iron Horse. Now he wants to bring Heineman and Bishop’s team back into the fold. Campbell manipulates the director of the FBI, Saxon’s team, and Bishop into a confrontation at his Shenandoah farm that where . . .  well you can probably guess the outcome.

Rhoades lives just down the road from Raleigh and made an initial splash with the redneck noir series starring the bail bond enforcer Jack Keller, but then went dark. A check on his blog showed that he had all but given up on the print business and had gone entirely electronic, now with 3 e-books available for Kindle and probably for the Nook, too. While one might say his stories are somewhat formulaic, they are no less engrossing. The acknowledged  cheapskate that I am has already purchased the other two, so be on the lookout. 

East Coast Don