Synopsis
Carl Herbold enjoys being bad. After all, he is terrifyingly good at it. Stimulated by violence, he and his brother, Cecil, had easily graduated from juvenile delinquents to full-blown killers. And Carl, now serving a life sentence in an Arkansas penitentiary, carries out a daring escape with a fellow inmate and is on his way back to where he began--Blewer County, Texas.
Ann Corbett had been widowed right before her son was born. Beset by debt and personal tragedy, she faces the toughest challenge of her life--holding on to the ranch that is her son's birthright--unaware that she is at the center of Carl Herbold's vengeful plan. Ezzy Hardge is a retired lawman who is haunted by the one crime he sacrificed everything to solve, but could not. And Jack Sawyer, a seemingly easygoing cowboy and drifter whose past is shrouded in mystery, understands Herbold's twisted mind and his hate-filled lust for vengeance. Risking exposure of his own troubled past, Jack arrives at Anna...
Publishers Weekly
A 20-year-old unsolved murder in a small East Texas town sets the stage for this fast-paced and romantically charged, if stiffly written, thriller, the latest (after Fat Tuesday) from the prolific Brown.
Everyone in Blewer, Texas, assumes that the nefarious Herbold brothers, Carl and Cecil, murdered Patsy McCorkle two decades ago, but neither was ever charged with the killing. Carl, the more menacing brother, has spent those decades in an Arkansas prison for an unrelated crime. But now Carl has escaped and Blewer residents fear he might come back to town. Local rancher Delray Corbett has more to fear than most -- the Herbolds are his estranged stepsons. So when drifter Jack Sawyer swaggers onto Delray's ranch looking for work, Delray hires him, thinking that Jack's presence will ease his mind regarding the safety of his deaf, widowed daughter-in-law, Anna, and her five-year-old son, David. But Delray doesn't know that Jake has a closer connection to Blewer, and to the Corbetts, than he's letting on.
Brown's deftly plotted narrative twists and turns without losing hold of its suspense. Her characters are fully fleshed out, and she pays particular attention to Anna's situation as a deaf woman facing ignorance in a rural community. Some graphic sex and violence and the voices of these east Texan good (and bad) ol' boys animate this harrowing tale of crime, revenge and redemption.