High White Sun
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Even though the corrupt Sheriff Ross is dead and gone, outlaws still walk free, peace comes at a price, and redemption remains hard to find in this fiery and violent novel from the author of The Far Empty.
Sometimes we have to be wolves...
In the wake of Sheriff Stanford Ross's death, former deputy Chris Cherry--now Sheriff Cherry--is the new "law" in Big Bend County, yet he still struggles to escape the long, dark shadow of that infamous lawman. As Chris tries to remake and modernize his corrupt department, bringing in new deputies, including young America Reynosa and Ben Harper--a hard-edged veteran homicide detective now lured out of retirement--he finds himself constantly staring down a town unwilling to change, friends and enemies unable to let go of the past, and the harsh limits of his badge.
But it's only when a local Rio Grande guide is brutally and inexplicably murdered, and America and Ben's ongoing investigation is swept aside by a secretive federal agent, that the novice sheriff truly understands just how tenuous his hold on that badge really is. And as other new threats rise right along with the unforgiving West Texas sun, nothing can prepare Chris for the high cost of crossing dangerous men such as John Wesley Earl, a high-ranking member of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and the patriarch of a murderous clan that's descended on Chris's hometown of Murfee; or Thurman Flowers, a part-time pastor and full-time white supremacist hell-bent on founding his violent Church of Purity in the very heart of the Big Bend.
Before long, Chris, America, and Ben are outmaneuvered, outnumbered, and outgunned--inexorably drawn into a nearly twenty-year vendetta that began with a murdered Texas Ranger on a dusty highway outside of Sweetwater, and that can only end with fire, blood, and bullets in Murfee's own sun-scorched streets...
Welcome back to the Big Bend...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Scott's superb sequel to 2016's The Far Empty combines multifaceted characters with edge-of-the-seat suspense. The savage bludgeoning of river guide Billy Bravo, which obliterated part of his face, leads Texas sheriff Chris Cherry's deputies veteran Ben Harper and rookie Am Reynosa to confront John Wesley Earl, a leader of a vicious prison gang, the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Their efforts to find proof linking the ABT to the murder are derailed by a surprising revelation from an FBI agent, making Chris's pursuit of justice even harder. The reverberations of the brutal 1999 murder of Texas Ranger Bob Ford also affect the homicide investigation. Scott excels at presenting the juxtaposition of the horrific and the mundane ("Her daddy had died on a stretch of dirty concrete ten steps from her window, and afterward cops came and got the body and took some pictures and tossed their cigarette butts on the place where he'd drawn his last breath, leaving behind only a yellow chalk outline"). Ace Atkins fans will relish this gritty crime novel. Author tour.)
