SCARED MONEY

A corpse-laden reunion for Deputy Clyde Thomas and retired Texas Ranger Jeremiah Spur (The Night of the Dance, 2003).

In this corner, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department has the bullet-ridden bodies of drug-dealer Lamont Stubbs and his girlfriend; in that corner, shady Dallas billionaire Benjamin Farkas wants to retrieve his missing treasurer Dusty Nelson and $10 million from his treasury. Both cases are strewn with complications. Everybody who knows anything about Lamont’s execution seems too deeply implicated in the Brenham drug scene to level with Clyde. Off in Dallas, Farkas insists that Jeremiah, his chosen bounty hunter, operate without speaking directly with him and without the help of any police officials. Officials from the CIA and DEA are soon swarming over both cases, of course, and Jeremiah’s liaison, Farkas Chief Financial Officer Leslie Whitten, makes every attempt to swarm over him. But the biggest complication, the inevitable connection between the two cases, is only the trigger for a new round of surprises, betrayals, and homicides. Every step forward seems to land both investigators in even deeper trouble, till one’s named in a $25 million lawsuit and the other’s confronting his long-estranged father in a hopeless attempt to rescue the other from the clutches of a Mexican drug cartel.

“A thing can only be what it is,” maintains stalwart Jeremiah—the most deceptive motto imaginable for this oversized, shape-shifting slice of action/mystery/suspense.