Badger Games
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A criminal couple joins a nefarious underground organization in this novel full of “sharp characterization, vivid scenes, and offbeat humor” (The Oregonian).
When anyone in the Detroit underworld hears the names Joe Service and Helen Sedlacek, they know lots of trouble—and bullet-riddled bodies—are sure to follow.
That’s why Joe and Helen are perfect recruits for the Lucani—a group of rogue operatives, covert intelligence, and cold-blooded killers who bypass all those pesky laws and government red tape to get the dirtiest jobs done.
For their first assignment, Joe and Helen are back in beautiful Butte, Montana, searching for Franko, a Lucani agent who supposedly vanished while on an overseas drug-busting mission. But what starts as a simple manhunt quickly spins out of control, with backstabbing, betrayal, and bloodshed all over.
Luckily for Joe and Helen, that’s just another day at the office . . .
“Great fun . . . there is plenty of action, low-key black humor, and Jackson’s perfect ear for the nuances of criminal speech.” —Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Detective Sergeant Mulheisen, titular hero of Jackson's freewheeling Mulheisen series (Man with an Axe, etc.), is all but absent from this ninth installment. Occupying center stage are his nemeses, freelance pistoleros Joe Service and Helen Sedlacek, this time caught in a web of double- and triple-crosses between secret U.S. intelligence cabals and deep-cover agents from the former Yugoslavia. Joe and Helen, once employed by the mob, are now working for a former American colonel who runs a vigilante group called the Lucani. Composed of intelligence and military personnel fed up with the sluggishness of governments and tribunals, the Lucani exact violent justice on international criminals. Following the disappearance of Lucani agent "Franko" (who recently penetrated a Serbian drug cartel), the colonel recruits Joe and Helen to chase the erstwhile agent from Kosovo to the Serbian community in Butte, Mont. Complicating matters is a trigger-happy Serbian-American thug named Bazok (the "Badger"), who may be a cartel assassin or a rival deep-cover agent. Joe is more interested in retiring to a quiet corner of bucolic Montana so that he and Helen can enjoy quality time together than in finding Franko, but he takes notice when the irrepressible Badger shows up and starts blasting his way through Butte, also on Franko's trail. Joe, Helen and their ilk have too much fun with sex, drugs, guns and clich d banter to really get down to the business of international crime fighting. Without the counterbalancing weight of Mulheisen, the larks overwhelm Jackson's intricate suspense plot.
