Hard Rain
A Novel
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
From the Tony Hillerman Prize-winning author of Pay Dirt Road comes Hard Rain, Samantha Jayne Allen's mesmerizing next novel set in a hardscrabble Texas town dealing with disaster.
In shock and found clinging to a tree branch, Bethany Richter is pulled from thrashing floodwaters that have decimated the town of Garnett, Texas and killed a dozen others.
Six months after solving the murder of a local waitress, Annie McIntyre is working as an apprentice P.I. when she's handed her first solo case: uncover the identity of the man who rescued Bethany before he was swept downriver.
When Annie's search turns up a different victim—shot dead, not drowned—Annie questions if the hero they seek is actually a killer.
Flexing her new skills while relying on the wisdom of her eccentric, ex-cop grandfather, the case leads Annie into a web of drug dealers, preachers, and wayward drifters trying to make sense of life after a disaster. Annie's own convictions are put to the ultimate test as long-held secrets, corruption, and violence are exposed like the ruin that lies beneath receding waters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The violent effects and muddy waters of a flood that devastates Garnett, Tex., provide a richly suggestive backdrop for Allen's taut sequel to 2022's Pay Dirt Road, a Hillerman Prize winner. One flood survivor, Bethany Richter, asks apprentice PI Annie McIntyre, an old friend, to identity a stranger who briefly helped Bethany to safety. It's a rather thin premise for a case, but Annie leaps at the chance to prove herself. Annie's search leads her to uncover town secrets and scandals, including adultery, drug dealing, unethical real estate transactions, theft, and brutality. When someone is fatally shot, she has to wonder whether the killer could be the stranger she's seeking. Meanwhile, in an unevenly developed subplot, Annie attempts to sustain a romance with her boyfriend. Keep a pencil handy for making notes on the cast, for there are nearly 20 in an intricately connected social web. Written with some pitch-perfect imagery and an acute awareness of Annie's longing to make good in her hometown, this intense novel holds its secrets until the final harrowing pages. Regional mystery fans will hope to soon return to Garnett.
