Riders on the Storm
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
When we last saw Sam McCain he had been drafted, along with his National Guard unit, to fight the war in Vietnam. But Sam's military career ended in boot camp when he was accidentally shot in the head and forced to spend three months in a military hospital to recover.Sam returns to his hometown of Black River Falls, where he works as a lawyer and an investigator for the court of the snobbish but amusing Judge Esme Ann Whitney. He also gets engaged to his high school classmate Wendy Bennett. Life is good until he is drawn into the bitter battle between the Vietnam veterans in town.The majority of veterans nationwide are angrily opposed to this new anti-war faction, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, feeling that it shames their patriotic service. Two of Sam's oldest friends are caught up in this same battle. Veteran Steve Donovan brutally belittles and finally savagely beats his old friend veteran Will Cullen when Cullen announces he's joined the anti-war group.When Cullen is found murdered, the obvious suspect is Steve Donovan, but Sam has serious doubts about the man's guilt. At least three people had reasons to murder Cullen, and Sam begins to suspect he'll discover even more as his investigation heats up, in this dynamic new politically-charged mystery novel by a veteran of the form.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gorman's formulaic 10th Sam McCain mystery (after 2011's Bad Moon Rising) focuses on the domestic conflict over the Vietnam War. Steve Donovan, an Iowa congressional candidate, savagely beats his fellow Vietnam veteran, Will Cullen, after Will announces he's joined an antiwar group. When Donovan is found dead in a Black River Falls parking lot the next morning, everyone except for Sam, a lawyer cum investigator, assumes that Will took his revenge. Gorman skillfully depicts Vietnam veterans' complex, often contradictory feelings toward the war from rabid patriotism to rage toward the government but is less subtle in the way he presents his female characters, who are all mysterious, arousing, and wear clothes that "love" their bodies (e.g., "A gray skirt that loved every inch of her lower body as the turquoise blouse loved the upper"). The cynical, detached, and plainspoken Sam, a detective in the classic noir tradition, redeems the paint-by-the-numbers plot.
