Cat Dancers » (Reprint)

P.T. DEUTERMANN spent twenty-six years in government service before retiring to begin his writing career. He is the author of nine previous novels. He lives with his wife in North Carolina.

THRILL SEEKER
Dangling silently in front of a cave eighty feet down the cliff's edge, the man snaps a picture of the enraged mountain lion. The furious beast lunges...but the man is gone, back up the rope.

JUSTICE DEALER
When a judge releases two unrepentant killers on a legal technicality, North Carolina police Lieutenant Cam Richter knows facing the victims' grieving families is going to be tough. But when Killer #1 turns up on the Internet riding a homemade electric chair?followed a few days later by Killer #2?Cam thinks despair may have turned to vigilante justice.

MAN EATER
But it doesn't add up, especially when Cam becomes a target. It looks like these vigilantes may also be cops, and he's quickly running out of people to trust. The answers lie deep in the North Carolina wilderness, where Cam must track down this mysterious group of adrenaline-driven "Cat Dancers"--and risk losing everything he has left…

"GRIPPING. . .ORIGINAL AND INTENSE."
--Book Page

"FULL OF SURPRISES. . .KEEPS YOU READING PAST YOUR BED TIME."
--Charlotte Observer

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. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.