Dead Line (Arliss Cutter)
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4.1 • 69 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Deputy U.S. Marshals Arliss Cutter and Lola Teariki brave a brutal and unforgiving Alaskan winter on a desperate manhunt that takes a blood-chilling twist in New York Times bestselling author and former U.S. Marshal Marc Cameron’s breathless, taut new wilderness adventure thriller for fans of Paul Doiron, CJ Box, Taylor Moore, and William Kent Krueger.
Deputy U.S. Marshals Arliss Cutter and Lola Teariki are at frozen Cheney Lake, finally nearing their prey. He’s Butch Pritchard, a killer-for-hire as ruthless as the Anchorage wind, and wanted for the murder of a 25-year-old pregnant woman in Missouri. A cruel hit orchestrated by the victim’s husband, Royce Decker, a former member of the St. Louis Metro PD and on the run too. As quickly as Butch is in the marshals’ sight he disappears, abandoning a bear of a partner who’s terrified for his life. But it isn’t Butch or Royce he’s afraid of.
If it isn’t those two outlaws, then who? And why? Right now, the creep in custody has gone silent and Arliss and Lola soon realize there’s more to this manhunt than they ever imagined. To see it through to the end they’ll have to find Butch first, then close on the cold-blooded husband. There is one lead to go on: a woman Butch has been involved with. His number one. She’s ready to talk. Even as scared to death as she is. When Arliss and Lola suddenly face an all-new case linked to this one, they’ll find out what everyone is so afraid of. And how many ways things could still go terribly wrong.
"A double-barreled blast of action, narrative, and impossible-to-fake authenticity.”—C. J. BOX
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A dark conspiracy and a brutal Alaskan winter both stack the odds against a dogged Deputy U.S. Marshal in this gripping crime thriller. Arliss Cutter and his partner Lola Teariki are on the hunt for Butch Pritchard, a hit man who was hired to murder an innocent pregnant woman by her own cold-blooded husband. Butch wouldn’t be the first criminal to hide from justice in the brutally cold wilderness, but it turns out what he’s really hiding from is another killer—one with their sights set on him. Fans of Marc Cameron’s long-running Arliss Cutter series will love how the expert tracker brings his perfectionist, no-nonsense approach to this gritty case, with revelations about his childhood offering tantalizing clues as to how he got that way. We enjoyed hearing how he contrasted with the more lively, intuitive, people-focused Lola—especially when she goes off on her own. David Chandler’s hardboiled narration sets the ideal tone for this tale of frigid suspense.
Customer Reviews
Enjoyable book that could have been better
The book overall was fun and kept me entertained throughout, however, I did not love that the secondary story taking place never really connected to the main case Arliss and Lola were working on. I kept waiting for the two cases to tie together somehow, to show that they had been connected all along but they never did. In past books in this series they have typically told two mysteries and then by the end they are brought together into one. I much prefer that format.
I believe the secondary case was a more interesting one at face value than that of Cutter and team locating a dirty cop. They kept stressing in that case how all of the players were scared of someone or something and I assumed this was going to be the tie in to our secondary story and it would explain in the end that all people connected to the dirty cop were scared of the bad guy from the secondary story line thus tying everything up in a neat bow. (I apologize for my vagueness but I don’t want to give out spoilers since the book is so newly released and most people won’t have had the chance to listen to it yet.) Instead what we got was two completely unrelated cases taking place in this book with the more interesting of the two not even involving our main characters until the last minute (and I do mean that literally) which was kind of underwhelming. It’s not until the epilogue that it’s revealed to us that whomever was scaring people so much is clearly a set up for the next book in the series. While I normally appreciate these sorts of breadcrumbs I feel like the “main case” in this book was sort of lackluster and it would have been more fun to make the whole story about the secondary case or not drag out whatever was going on in the first case into another book but instead make this entire book about that.
In conclusion, the story was written well and narrated excellently however the actual meat of the book is lacking a bit. Still highly recommend this entire series but I think maybe this book would be better if I could have read it in conjunction with the next in the series. Unfortunately for me, I’ll have to wait a year until the next book comes out. This is probably one of the weaker books and I would certainly not start with this one if you are considering reading the Arliss Cutter saga but if you loved the others this one is absolutely worth the listen even if the ending is a little underwhelming.
Outta here
5 chapters in and confused about two story lines that don sept come together. This is my first time reading this author and is based on biased reviews. I’m outta’ here.
Contemporary soap-opera with a “thriller” backdrop
I don’t understand when starting this that it was one of a series. Maybe had I started with book one, I might have been entertained by this. But as it stands, after 12 chapters I’m more motivated to ask for a refund than I am to continue. If this were billed as a story about the lives of the characters of an Alaskan town with a cop as the central point, at least I wouldn’t feel like I was sold on a thriller and handed a soap-opera. I appreciate a good build. But this was not engaging enough to continue.