A COLD KILLING

Shortish superhero Chase Defoe, a former Naval Intelligence officer who in profile resembles the face on the nickel, agrees to help out a friend by looking into the matter of four hijacked trucks carrying designer clothes. Under the tutelage of trendy fashion-illustrator Caroline, he tries to make sense of the ins and outs of the rag trade. Meanwhile, at the Hunter Game Farm, ex-cons Skean and Mobay are keeping poachers in three states in business--and attracting the attention of Yearner Claxon, mainstay of the Pennsylvania Game Commission. It turns out that Chase's case and Yearner's intersect in the person of Skean, who hired the hijackers. But for whom? Before Chase and Yearner can sort it all out, Caroline is raped, and Chase and Yearner are waylaid, beat up, shot at, attacked with an air hose, and set up for various kills--but, of course, win in the end, while around them the bad guys' bodies go flying (in one memorable instance, down a feeding trough, where someone gets gnawed on by killer hogs). Meaner, tauter and better written than Day's first, August Ice (p. 141), with a chilling overview of big-profit poachers, plus plenty of firepower for the NRA crowd.