Hangman Quotes

“Several years ago, the House Oversight Committee chairman wrote, referring to the cash sent to Iraq after the invasion: “The numbers are so large that it doesn’t seem possible that they are true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” Who indeed… In the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction determined that $8.8 billion in $100 bills was disbursed as cash to Iraqi ministries, “without assurance the monies were probably used are accounted for.” Worse still, he later decided that that lack of accountability “extended to the entire $20 billion expended” by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Much of this money was stolen by Americans. Millions of dollars was billed by contractors for contracts that simply did not exist. Where the contracts were real, accounts were not kept. Sometimes, perhaps even often, this can be attributed to the chaos present during wartime. But you would have to be naïve to think that hundreds of millions of dollars – probably billions – was not stolen. Hangman was the result of me asking – who stole it?”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“If you’ve been here since the beginning, thanks for sticking with me. I love doing what I do, and to know that at every hour of every day someone, somewhere in the world is reading one of my books is truly an amazing feeling. The sun never sets on the Jason Trapp Empire… Okay, it’s more of a fiefdom. But it’s mine!”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Last year I wrote a novel about a pandemic, False Flag. I don’t think in my wildest dreams that I could have imagined that the risks I read about during my research might actually happen. Even though every expert wrote that it wasn’t just a possibility, but an inevitability, that a novel virus would be able to take advantage of a human race that is more globally inter-connected than at any time in human history. It’s hard for any of us to imagine that the worst can actually happen – even though all I do all day is dream up scenarios in which it could! I promise I won’t write any books about asteroids colliding with the earth, or Yellowstone finally erupting, just in case…”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Trapp held his breath, knowing that it wasn’t his place to listen, but hoping that the message carried with it some news of Shea’s condition. Maybe it was even for him, Sarah wanting to keep him updated. It would be okay to listen to it, wouldn’t it”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“On the other side of the street from the library, sitting in the back of a beat-up Ford F-150 with blacked-out rear windows and cradling a considerably more modern SLR camera was a man who wasn’t really called Mike Lee. He wasn’t an employee of an insurance company called Atlanta Life, either, though he really was from Georgia”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“You didn’t,” Trapp said, and it was the truth. He’d only spilled his guts about his childhood to one man before, and though Price was practically a brother, this was different. Back then it had all felt so raw. Hell, he’d only been a few weeks removed from the hell house of his childhood, and basic training didn’t exactly provide the best opportunity for a heart-to-heart”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“His congratulations came in the form of the scratch of a liquor bottle opening. Trapp stood as Shea took a sip. Without meaning to, he studied her expression in the dancing light of the building campfire. She manfully resisted scrunching her face up in reaction to the heat of the alcohol, and almost succeeded”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Chino did as he was told but received the same response, accompanied in quick succession first by a vise clenching his stomach in its grip, then the metallic clang of bullets impacting the vehicle’s steel chassis. He twisted in his seat, his attention instinctively drawn to the sound of the impacts. In the back, Cpl. Miles Roth and Pvt. Stan Oxley had hunched low, behind the protection of the metal sides”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Harper was only a couple of feet away now, and Roth surged out of the ditch to help the NCO. He caught a round in the center of his forehead for his troubles. Like Oxley, one second he was there, the next he was gone”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“A smudge on the right-hand side of Trapp’s vision sent out a warning signal, attracting the attention of his conscious brain. In an instant, that nervous tension that was never that far away these days ramped itself back up. His fingers curled around the throttle, not feeding gas into the engine just yet, but ready to with a second’s notice”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Jason Trapp’s gaze jerked upward from the empty bottle of beer in front of him toward the source of the man’s voice before his head did. The bartender was in his 40s, with a fraying head of sandy brown hair and a couple of weeks’ worth of beard growth. His eyes were tired, sunk into sagging bunkers of flesh”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Lee swallowed hard, unable to draw his eyes away from Finch’s unnamed companion for very long. Something about the man was truly terrifying. He looked like he could crush a human head between those two meaty paws of his without breaking a sweat. More than that, he looked like he might even enjoy it”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Finch leapt out of the vehicle and landed on the uneven desert terrain in an athletic crouch. Jeffrey followed, noting with irritation that his black leather Oxfords were much less suited to the dusty ground than Finch’s tan desert boots. He suspected that the choice of location was no accident. Finch had a habit of playing what he thought of as unnecessary power games”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Chino stood unsteadily, propping himself up on his cane. He paused, then shuffled toward a battered chest of drawers against one wall. He opened it and pulled out a thick manila file, which Trapp saw as he returned was well-thumbed. His host threw it down on the couch”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“War rarely is,” the sheriff replied, maintaining eye contact for an unsettlingly long time. “But a pain shared is a pain halved.”
― Jack Slater, Hangman