The Cold Spot »

Tom Piccirilli is the author of twenty novels including The Cold Spot, The Midnight Road, The Dead Letters, Headstone City, November Mourns, and A Choir of Ill Children.  He's a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the International Thriller Writers Award, and Le Grand Prix de L'Imaginaire. 

Chase was raised as a getaway driver by his grandfather, Jonah, a con man feared by even the hardened career criminals who make up his crew. But when Jonah crosses the line and murders one of his own, Chase goes solo, stealing cars and pulling scores across the country….And then he meets Lila, a strong-willed deputy sheriff with a beguiling smile who shows him what love can be. Chase is on the straight and narrow for the first time in his life—until tragedy hits, and he must reenter the dark world of grifters and crooks. Now Chase is out for revenge—and he’ll have to turn to the one man he hates most in the world. Only Jonah can teach Chase how to become a stone-cold killer. But even as the two men work together, Chase knows that their unresolved past will eventually lead them to a showdown of their own.

Publishers Weekly

Orphaned at 10-his mother murdered, his father a suicide-Chase was raised by his grandfather Jonah, a grifter who has used Chase as a getaway driver. After Jonah shoots one of his crew during a poker game, Chase, at 21, realizing that the icy old man could easily turn on his own grandson, strikes off on his own. He works his way around the country stealing cars and driving for petty thieves until one night in Mississippi he runs up against deputy sheriff Lila Bodeen, who sees something in this brash young outlaw that she likes. Tragedy puts Chase back on the road, where he faces not only the killer but the truth-about himself and his shattered family. Piccirilli (The Midnight Road, etc.) tells the gritty, violent and dark tale in an appealingly noirish narrative style, highly economical yet bracingly intimate. (May)

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