Maxwell Carter - a fingerprint analyst at the criminal justice facility in Clarksburg, West Virginia - was supplementing his income by running a very simple scam whereby positive fingerprint matches in old crimes could be conveniently 'ignored' in return for a small retainer. But then he caught a shark in his net - one that did not take too kindly to blackmail. Maxwell's illicit career - and his life - were swiftly and brutally ended... When Johnny Harrison is called in to investigate Maxwell's grisly murder he quickly unearths a connection to an old child-murder in the bayous of Louisiana and the close-knit fishing community that work the Mississippi. Deciding to go undercover on one of the old trawlers, he digs into this alien world and starts to realise that he has stumbled on to something both sordid and enormously powerful, something that dates back 100 years into New Orleans's troubled history but could blow up Louisiana's present...
Jeff Gulvin is the author of nine novels and is currently producing a new series set in the American West. His previous titles include three books starring maverick detective Aden Vanner and another three featuring FBI agent Harrison, as well as two novels originally published under the pseudonym Adam Armstrong, his great-grandfather’s name. He received acclaim for ghostwriting Long Way Down, the prize-winning account of a motorcycle trip from Scotland to the southern tip of Africa by Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman. The breadth of Gulvin’s fiction is vast, and his style has been described as commercial with just the right amount of literary polish. His stories range from hard-boiled crime to big-picture thriller to sweeping romance.
Half English and half Scottish, Gulvin has always held a deep affection for the United States. He and his wife spend as much time in America as possible, particularly southern Idaho, their starting point for road-trip research missions to Nevada, Texas, or Louisiana, depending on where the next story takes them.
A gripping tale filled with tension all the way through. Set in the bayou country this book had many twists and turns. This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up and now that I've read it I fear it may have a lot of truth in it.