The Cat Dancers
A Novel
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- ¥1,200
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
An ingenious thriller of murder, revenge, and mystery in remote wilderness, by the acclaimed author of The Firefly and Hunting Season
When two lowlifes rob a gas station, murder the attendant, and then incinerate bystanders who are filling up their minivan, the Manceford County, North Carolina, police quickly arrest the killers at a nearby motel.
But a stubborn judge throws out the case because the suspects were not read their rights, leaving Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett and Lieutenant Cam Richter to face the anger of the victims' families. Soon thereafter, a mysterious e-mail arrives in the department: a link to a video of one of the murderers being executed in a homemade electric chair, ending with a voice announcing, "That's one." The shocking video spreads throughout the Internet, drawing the attention of local, state, and federal authorities and national media, and putting intense pressure on Bobby Lee and Cam to find the vigilante before he claims his second victim.
Assigned to head the search, Cam finds himself resented by some of his fellow officers and subtly threatened by others. His job is further complicated by the fact that the offending judge is also his ex-wife and now---after years apart, and an uneasy reconciliation---his sometime lover. Cam's questions lead him to a remote mountain area in western North Carolina and a group of daredevils who call themselves "the cat dancers"---so named because they have tracked the last wild mountain lions in the region to their dens, where they have photographed the animals face-to-face, or died trying. Cam must hunt this group and the cats they seek, or become their next target.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Deutermann's first chapter features the eponymous, anonymous cat dancer as he rappels down a cliff in the dead of night, swings into the cave of a 200-pound female mountain lion and snaps a picture of the enraged beast as she attempts to disembowel him. The scene then shifts to a pair of thugs, who, while attempting to rob a gas station minimart, shoot the Pakistani owner and cause a fire that incinerates a young soccer mom and her child. The scumbag perps skate on a technicality when judge Annie Bellamy points out they were never read their rights before confessing. That Deutermann (Firefly; Darkside) is able to fuse these two disparate plots is testament to his well-drawn characters, intelligent, realistic dialogue and top-notch writing. Lt. Cam Richter, of the Manceford County, N.C., Sheriff's Office, is in charge of the minimart case, which becomes much more complicated after he receives an e-mail attachment that shows one of the two freed killers, K-dog Simmonds, being electrocuted in what is clearly a home-made electric chair. Cam is soon headed into the backcountry of the Great Smoky Mountains on the trail of both a nest of vigilante killers and the elusive, possibly apocryphal Eastern mountain lion. Petrified readers will be checking under the bed and in the closets for any panthers that may have crept inside while they were glued to the pages.
