Annal:2000 John Creasey Memorial New Blood Dagger for a Debuting Author

God Is a Bullet

Boston Teran

• 2000 New Blood Dagger winner
• 2000 Edgar-1st Novel nominee
• Score: 16.5

The feral wasteland of the southern California desert and the badlands of Mexico: these are the settings for Boston Teran’s searing debut novel—a dark, wrenching thriller about personal conviction, retribution, and survival.

Fall 1970. In a remote playa a twelve-year-old boy stumbles upon a hideous scene in a dust-strewn trailer: the savage murder of a woman that will remain unsolved for twenty-five years.

Christmas week, 1995. A fourteen-year-old girl is kidnapped by a bloodthirsty satanic cult that calls itself the Left-Handed Path. The leader, Cyrus, considers murder the “ultimate freedom, ultimate joy . . . ultimate service.” His “tribe” is a group of drug-fueled young psychopaths honing their skills under the tutelage of a master. Helter Skelter. And then some.

Bob Hightower, the girl’s father, is a cop, suddenly more desperate than he ever imagined possible. There are no clues to his daughter’s whereabouts, only a scene of unfathomable carnage—the mutilated corpses of her mother and stepfather—left behind by the kidnappers. His only hope is a fierce ex-cult…