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Zusatztext “Starts with a bang.”— Publishers Weekly “Mr. Woods delivers smart characters and dialogue with a nice swing to it.... Holly and Ham are engaging…with a lot of gumption and tough-talking banter between them.”— The New York Times “Fast paced and exciting…sure to please his fans.”— Booklist “[Will] keep you turning pages.”— Kirkus Reviews Informationen zum Autor Stuart Woods was the author of more than ninety novels, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Stone Barrington series. A native of Georgia and an avid sailor and pilot, he began his writing career in the advertising industry. Chiefs , his debut in 1981, won the Edgar Award. Woods passed away in 2022. Klappentext Stuart Woods brings back small-town police chief Holly Barker-and her extraordinary Doberman, Daisy-for another exhilarating adventure in this New York Times bestseller. When Holly Barker's wedding festivities are shattered by a brutal robbery, she vows to find the culprits. With nothing to go on but the inexplicable killing of an innocent bystander, Holly discovers evidence that leads her into the midst of a clan whose members are as mysterious as they are zealous. Holly's father, Ham, a retired army master sergeant, is her ticket into their strange world. What he finds there boggles the mind and sucks them all-Holly, Ham, and Daisy-into a whirlpool of crazed criminality from which even the FBI can't save them... One HE WAITED UNTIL THE LAST OF THE LINE HAD entered the cinema for the eight o’clock movie. “All right, let’s take a tour,” he said to the boy at the wheel. The boy drove slowly around the parking lot. “Here,” he said. The boy stopped the car. The man looked at the parked vehicle. It was an older Ford commercial van, well cared for and clean. “Wait a minute,” he said. He got out of the car and grabbed his tool bag. “Drive over to the edge of the parking lot and wait. When you see the van’s headlights go on, follow me home. I’ll be making a lot of turns.” “Yessir,” the boy said. He slipped a pair of rubber gloves on, then walked over to the van and tried the door. Unlocked. It took him less than a minute to punch the steering lock and start the van. He switched on the lights and checked the odometer: 48,000 miles; not bad. He backed out of the parking space and drove out of the lot, onto the highway. In the rearview mirror he watched the boy fall in behind him, well back. He drove for a couple of minutes, constantly making turns, checking the mirror; then he turned down a dirt road, drove a hundred yards and stopped. The boy stopped behind him. He sat in the van and watched the traffic pass on the highway for five minutes; then he made a U-turn and went back to the highway and headed west. He had two hours before the van’s owner would come out of the movies and discover his loss, but he needed only half an hour. Twenty-five minutes later, he drove into the little town, and five minutes after that, he pulled the van into the large steel shed behind his business. Half a dozen men, who had been sitting around a poker table, stood up and walked over. “Looks good,” one of them said. “It’ll do. Only 48K on the clock, and it runs like a sewing machine. Let’s do it.” Everybody went to work. First, they donned rubber gloves, then they washed the van thoroughly and cleaned the interior, and fastened two rough wooden benches to the floor. Two men unrolled a large decal and affixed it to the side of the van. Environmental Services, Inc., it read, and in smaller letters, Cleaning up after the world. There was a phone number, too. If anyone rang it, they’d get a pizzeria on U.S. 1. They fixed an identical decal to the opposite side of the van, then changed the license plates, tossing the old ones into the van. Somebody looked under the hood, fiddled with a couple ...
