The Devil's Right Hand

Book:	The Devil's Right Hand: A Novel
Author:	J.D. Rhoades
Honors:	2006 Shamus-1st Novel nominee Score: 6.56
Genres:	Mystery/Suspense books
Publisher:	St. Martin's Minotaur

The Devil’s Right Hand is the story of Jack Keller, a man tormented by the nightmares he’s had ever since a disastrous tour in Desert Storm. Destroyed by his experience, Keller now makes his living tracking bailjumpers for H&H, a North Carolina bail bonds company run by a reclusive, beautiful, and horribly scarred woman named Angela. In truth, Keller doesn’t work bail enforcement to live, he lives to work: the only thing that breaks through the numbness is the thrill of the hunt, the sound of gunfire, the high that comes with each successful takedown.

When H&H is required to track down a lifelong loser for jumping bail on a routine burglary collar, Keller has no idea how gravely events are about to spiral out of his control. He chases his quarry straight into the center of a firestorm involving a pair of local Indians blinded by rage and hell-bent to avenge their father’s murder. Along the way they encounter a vicious North Carolina cop with a mean streak and very few moral boundaries. Not to mention the cop’s beautiful partner Marie, caught between a newfound desire for the just-on-the-edge-of-the-law Jack Keller and her loyalty to a police department with a serious ethics problem.

These people, each hurtling forward on their own individual trajectories of self-destruction, begin to intersect each other’s lives in a series of volatile, escalating, and deadly events. Furiously paced and filled with unforgettable, masterfully drawn characters destined to meet in a bloody showdown which most of them will not survive, The Devil’s Right Hand is a stylish, razor-edged debut novel that redefines the rules of the Southern thriller.

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