The Price of Blood (1997)
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
In the last 20 years Phil Broker has pulled himself together. A good,
tough undercover cop in Minnesota, he knows the difference between a
sucker punch and a lucky break. And although he's put his Vietnam years
behind him, the grown daughter of his old commander has been dogging his
heels for months. Nina Pryce is trying to exonerate her dishonorably
discharged dead father and -- more importantly -- find the 10 tons of
gold he helped liberate during a U.S. commando mission.Broker
doesn't like the smell of it. Still, Nina has her charms, and can be
very persuasive. The only problem is, two of Broker's old army buddies
have beaten them to the search. Rich, sadistic Cyrus La Porte has the
means, but no direction. Convicted thief Jimmy Tuna has a line on the
location but no cash. Jimmy's a dying man with nothing left to win -- or
lose. And Broker and Nina know both men would kill them for the
slimmest chance to take it all.A riveting suspense novel that reads like a thrilling treasure hunt with a murderous legacy that echoes down from the past.
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After the Rain (2004)
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
Logan's last two books featuring Phil Broker have emphasized extreme weather conditions: Phil broiled in Vapor Trail, froze in Absolute Zero,
and incessant rain is the key to this fifth thriller in an outstanding
series. Phil's estranged wife, army Maj. Nina Pryce, is back in the U.S.
and involved in a high stakes antiterrorist mission with crusty old
ex-Special Forces Col. Holland Wood and lesbian warrior Jane Singer.
Their lead is a name, Ace Shuster, who turns out to be a likable
ne'er-do-well North Dakotan who runs a small liquor-smuggling operation.
Nina's assignment is to romance Ace until he spills the beans.
Phil—ex-cop, ex-soldier and all-around knight-errant—is drawn in because
it's a righteous cause, and Nina still looks pretty damn good to him.
The pace is rather stately until the rain stops, then the plot picks up
speed until all concerned are racing toward a confrontation involving
the destruction of a large chunk of American real estate and the
citizens thereon. It's an unbeatable combination: a smart, well-honed
plot, fascinating characters (including a Lebanese sleeper spy, various
local smugglers and a sexually deviant psycho-killer) and a writer with
an original voice and the prose skills to tie it all together.
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South of Shiloh
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
A nameless sniper is targeting participants in popular Civil War battle reenactments, and Minnesota reenactor Paul Edin is killed at the mock Battle of Kirby Creek, near Corinth, Mississippi. His death is ruled an accident, but Paul's widow, Jenny, discovers that the sniper's bullet was meant for the man standing next to Paul, a cop named Kenny Beeman. To penetrate the Mississippi smokescreen, Jenny enlists the aid of her former lover, news photographer John Rane. Appealing to be covering a story, Rane pokes into the Tennessee-Mississippi border country and teams up with Beeman. With demons nipping at his heels, Rane picks a Sharps rifle and live ammunition and heads off to the Shiloh Battlefield—and a showdown with a killer.South of Shiloh is a pulse-pounding thriller from a master of the genre—a story that uses a popular national pastime as the springboard for a page-turning read.
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Absolute Zero (2002)
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
"A great piece of writing."John SandfordAbsolute Zero
is chuck Logan's breakout thriller, a page-turning tour de force that
begins with a white-knuckle rescue of a canoeing expedition, and that
comes to a stunning conclusion on the coldest night in Minnesota
history. It's a story of love, manipulation and revenge that puts Phil
Broker in the elite company of fictional-series-heavyweights Harry Bosch
and Lucas Davenport.
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Vapor Trail (2003)
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
"The snow is gone, the ice is gone - winter is long forgotten. When the
phone wakes Phil Broker at five a.m. on the morning of this forty-eighth
birthday - six months removed from his surviving a January cold snap
that (in Absolute Zero) nearly claimed his life - it's already
ninety-two degrees. It's July, and Stillwater, Minnesota, finds itself
in the middle of the worst heat wave in local memory." "The news on the
phone has nothing to do with birthday wishes, however. A year earlier,
an angry citizen served as jury and executioner by pumping twelve
bullets into a known pedophile - and in the process became a folk hero,
dubbed "the Saint" by locals. Despite protests to the contrary,
everybody in the community (including the police department) felt
justice had been served, and the investigation quickly went cold. Ever
since, strong rumors have circulated that the real reason the Saint
hasn't been apprehended is that he - or she - is a cop." "Now a priest
has been murdered, and a clue left at the scene suggests it to be the
work of a vigilante. Was the priest a sexual predator? Could the Saint
be back? For the members of the Stillwater law-enforcement community, it
means that a killer could be in their midst." The caller begs for
Broker's help: as an outsider, Broker can be counted on to follow the
investigation wherever it leads. But as the temperature mounts and new
victims begin surfacing, Broker wonders if he's been set up to catch a
bullet for a scandal that threatens to bring down the Stillwater Police
Department.
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The Big Law (1998)
Chuck Logan
Chuck Logan
The Big Law's intricate mechanics are set in motion by one fatal choice:
Broker's naive ex-wife Caren decides to blow the whistle on her
feckless husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop who's moonlighting as an
informant for the Chicago mob. Unwisely for her, she confides in Tom
James, a disaffected reporter nursing dreams of the perfect crime.
Seeing a way out of his dead-end life and into his dreams, Tom cajoles
Caren into entrusting him with the suitcase full of greenbacks the mob
had paid her informant husband. When Caren is killed, Tom frames
Angland, absconds with the suitcase, runs to the FBI (known to its
employees as the Big Law), and wangles himself a berth in the Witness
Protection Program. Only Broker senses something amiss in Tom's
testimony, and he sets out to find the truth. But to do that, he must
find Tom, who has the Big Law and a big suitcase full of cash on his
side.
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