Jackstraw
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
Thomas Jackstraw, heir to a long family tradition of proud military men, was drummed out of West Point twenty years ago when he wouldn’t denounce fellow cadets for cheating. In the two decades since, he has traveled the world as a highly paid mercenary, training Third World armies and guerrilla factions and sometimes leading them into battle. After his young bride dies in a suspicious car crash, he grows disillusioned and retreats from the world of emotion. His latest job takes him to a small backwater republic in South America, where he spends his nights drinking and his days trying to build an army from a ragtag group of rebels. So when Jackstraw, an excellent marksman, is offered a small fortune to fake the assassination of a U.S. vice-presidential candidate, things get really complicated—especially when he and the attractive, amoral politician, Rachel Valentine, meet and hit it off very, very well.
Jackstraw suspects a double-cross, however, and plots an alternate escape route. But he’s a step behind the trickery. When the staged shooting goes horribly awry, he barely survives and makes his way back to the U.S., where he becomes a fugitive hunted by every law enforcement agency in the nation. As he works his way across the country, he must use all his considerable skills to evade capture and turn the tables on the shadowy forces conspiring against him.
From the jungles of South America and the peaks of the Rocky Mountains to the backrooms and bedrooms of a presidential campaign, Jackstraw is both a thrilling adventure story, and a tangled tale of redemption, greed, power—and even love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sophisticated thriller, Faust (Sea of Bones) introduces readers to narrator Thomas Jackstraw, a mercenary killer on assignment in Latin America training would-be soldiers. Before long, operatives of the fledgling American Patriotic Party an alternative to the traditional Democratic and Republican parties offer Jackstraw both fortune and asylum to fake the assassination of its sexed-up female vice presidential candidate, Rachel Leah Valentine, unleashing a tangled plot that takes readers on a whirl-wind adventure spanning Third World jungles, seedy Chicago hotel rooms, and the storm-whipped Rocky Mountains. Jackstraw, a West Point expellee who comes from a long line of distinguished mili-tary men, realizes he's been set up after the staged shooting in a crowded Latin American public square backfires and the aging APP presidential candidate takes a fatal bullet. Jackstraw retreats to the United States and becomes the most wanted man in America while quietly plotting revenge on his double-crossers. Complicating matters is his steamy relationship with Valentine and an ambitious re-porter's quest to clear Jackstraw's name with a career-defining story. Snappy, realistic dialogue and Jackstraw's snark propel the narrative, and he emerges as a charismatic, though potentially polarizing, villain with traces of a conscience. Love him or hate him, Faust should give Jackstraw another starring role.
