Hartley Stevens Knihy

Jeremiah St. Cloud thought he was done with football forever. He played it at West Point, but his athletics career is long behind him. So is his military career. After a nine-year stint with the 108 Messengers, a special-ops organization, he has settled into Cable County, Florida. He thinks it is peaceful and predictable. He's dead wrong. Now, in his new capacity as a private investigator, St. Cloud's been sucked back into football once again. The national-championship trophy at the University of Florida has gone missing. St. Cloud has been hired to find the thief, but he is sidetracked by a murder investigation. At the same time the trophy was stolen, a student was killed in the biotechnology building. How are the two connected? And what do they have to do with a south Florida sugar baron, the sultan of Qatar, and an honest-to-goodness cannibal in a shock collar? Hartley Stevens has created an unforgettable adventure in the third book of his Cable Counties Thriller series. St. Cloud may be a hard-boiled detective, but the assorted misfits of Florida will give him a run for his money.

It has been seventeen years since Jeremiah St. Cloud left Florida's rough-and-ready Cable Counties. Since then, he's spent four years at West Point, four more serving in various desert wars, and nine working with the 108 Messengers, an obscure and highly secretive military unit. Now he's returned home. Cloud is back less than ten hours before his childhood friend Earl kills the son of the local lumber baron. Pop Fuller controls most of Central Florida's lumber, and he is enraged to hear of his meth-head son's death. While evidence suggests the death was an accident, the local sheriff slams Earl behind bars and starts making life in prison a living hell for Cloud's buddy-all under Fuller's direction. But Cloud won't stand for it and sets out to prove Earl's innocence. As he puts increasing pressure on Fuller, it becomes evident the lumber king has a thriving illegal side business which, if revealed, would put the man away for good. And Fuller can't allow that. As their feud comes to a head at the lumber baron's private wild game club, an old-fashioned manhunt is about to start. But who is the hunter and who is the prey?