In another time, Maddie Underhill would’ve been considered the retired schoolmarm. Right now, she and her grandson are cleaning up after a storm. A huge summer thunderstorm rolled through Gibson County, NC after ripping up Tennessee with a number of destructive tornadoes, especially around Chattanooga. While sweeping up, her grandson picks up what looks to be part of a photo and shows his grandmother. She studies it closely before running inside to call the sheriff.
She gets Tim Buckthorn on the horn who, when he arrives agrees with Maddie’s discovery. It looks to be a girl who is bound to a chair, gagged, bruised with a disembodied hand holding the front page of a newspaper . . .
POL. In cop-speak: proof of life.
He quickly establishes that the newspaper was from the Atlanta Constitution, 2 days ago. Kidnappings get the FBI involved. The return call is from a Charlotte agent he dealt with in Breaking Cover Joe Wolf and his chip-on-her-shoulder partner Leila Dushane.
First order of business: where. The storm obviously picked up debris and blew the pic to Maddie’s front yard. A number of bits of data fall into place suggesting the Chattanooga area. Tim’s brother-in-law is a local developer with his own plane.
Turns out, the girl’s dad has gambling debts and is in deep with a group that broke away from the infamous Dixie Mafia headed by the aging Lamp Monroe, centered near Biloxi. To apply pressure, Lamp has his henchman Sean Donovan (a former IRA bomber) snatch the girl. He stashes the girl in the basement of a safe house owned by Lamp’s grandson/heir apparent. But the house was ground zero for a tornado that flattens the house sending debris across the storm’s path.
Joe, Leila, and Tim track down the house and come on Sean and Lamps grandson trying to dig out the girl. The ensuing fight leaves Lamp with one less heir, Sean on the run, but the girl is safe.
Lamp ain’t happy. No one messes with family, so he sends Sean out to clean up loose ends. And does so by leaving a trail of bodies as he heads to Pine Lake, NC to enact some Mississippi-style justice on Tim and his FBI partners.
And . . . that’s, essentially, the preamble. Once Sean strikes Pine Lake, Tim decides to return the favor on Sean and Lamp. Tim’s reason for living was to protect his family and his town and he had failed to do so. The only way left is a showdown that may well end up being suicide by crook.
My library had notified me that a power rotation author’s newest (All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer) was in. The table by the door had a collection of NC authors, including this one, so I grabbed it. Rhoades is a lawyer in rural NC who writes in an obscure genre called Redneck Noir. I’ve read all his books, love this genre and wish he had more titles. How could you not like the “Redneck Noir” genre? He had sort of gone off the print grid for a while. His 3 most recent books had been e-books only. This print version looks to be self-published. Surprisingly, it’s not mentioned on his website, but is available on Amazon and is reviewed on Goodreads.
I thoroughly enjoyed this and hope J.D. doesn’t stay so far under the radar. Characters, plot, pacing, dialogue, locations all work for me. Tired of the usual police procedural? Courtroom drama? International thriller? Do yourself a favor and do your best to find any of the titles by this small town lawyer. To borrow a line from NFL All-Pro Chris Carter: “C’mon, man.” Redneck Noir.
East Coast Don
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