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Informationen zum Autor David Joy Klappentext Winner of the 2020 Dashiell Hammett Award for Literary Excellence in Crime Writing Acclaimed author and "remarkably gifted storyteller" (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them. When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time. Frustrated by the slow pace and limitations of the law, Raymond decides to take matters into his own hands. After a workplace accident left him out of a job and in pain, Denny Rattler has spent years chasing his next high. He supports his habit through careful theft, following strict rules that keep him under the radar and out of jail. But when faced with opportunities too easy to resist, Denny makes two choices that change everything. For months, the DEA has been chasing the drug supply in the mountains to no avail, when a lead-just one word-sets one agent on a path to crack the case wide open…but he'll need help from the most unexpected quarter. As chance brings together these men from different sides of a relentless epidemic, each may come to find that his opportunity for redemption lies with the others. Leseprobe One Rain bled over the dusty windshield. Raymond Mathis wrung the steering wheel in his fists trying to remember if there was anything left worth taking. The front door of his house stood open and from the driveway he knew who'd broken in. Fact was, if it wasn't nailed down, it was already gone. What pawned easily went first and now the boy stole anything that looked like it might hold any value at all. Across the yard, the last of Ray's dogs bawled from the kennel. There'd been a time when he bred the best squirrel and coon dogs ever to come out of Jackson County, a line of black-and-tan mountain feists that'd tree anything that climbed. He'd raised beagles to run rabbits through bramble back before outsiders riddled the land with no trespassing signs, and this was the last of them: a lean bitch named Tommy Two-Ton who was grayed in the face and shook on her hind legs as she balanced against bowed chicken wire. Crossing the yard, Ray was thankful the boy had at least put the dog up this time. The hound was old and blind, but hadn't lost her nose. Earlier that summer, the boy had broken in, left the door standing wide, and Tommy was gone nearly a week before Ray found her two coves over, panting and hobbling half-starved down the road, having chased God knows what through the night. A dog gets on a scent and there's no turning back, and in that way dogs and men aren't that different. Ray didn't blame Tommy like he didn't blame the boy. Both were after something they had no business chasing, but he understood how a single thought could enter a man's mind and absolutely consume him. "You ready for supper?" Ray said as he slid the barrel bolt back on the door. The bones of the five-stall kennel had weathered gray but were still as solid as the day he framed them. Rain slid off the back of the tin roof and seeped into the ground as quickly as it fell. The hound howled melancholic and lonesome as if she hadn't seen a soul in years. When the door swung open, she trotted through the yard and into the house, then shook herself dry with ears slapping jowls. This was the first rain to touch the mountain in months. The ground was so dry that stopping there in the yard, Raymond could almost hear the earth lapping at what fell, trying to wet its mouth enough to stave off dying of thirst. The ridges were burning and the air smelled of smoke and there was no front in the forecast. Ray figured this little spell was just a cruel joke. Still, he stood there staring up into the sky, letting the drops beat against his eyelids while he p...
