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STRIKE DOG by Joseph Heywood

STRIKE DOG

by Joseph Heywood

Pub Date: Sept. 1st, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59921-160-2
Publisher: Lyons Press

Michigan Conservation Officer Grady Service (Running Dark, 2005, etc.) tracks a savage new species: the serial cop killer.

Though no one in Upper Peninsula law enforcement has ever seen or heard of a homicidal sociopath who specializes in police officers, it looks as if that drought is over. Game wardens in Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri have been snuffed over several years with such unobtrusive efficiency that the pattern is only now emerging. To Grady, it’s a pattern of particular importance, since according to the FBI, he has a prominent place on the killer’s to-do list. He doesn’t know why, nor does the Bureau. But there does seem to be a special malevolence directed against Grady and those he loves. He can’t believe, for instance, that the recent, devastating car accident that robbed him of his girlfriend Maridly and his son Walter was really an accident. Maridly was too good a driver for Grady to buy that story. Someone ran her off the road, someone who understood very clearly how Grady would view those deaths—as if “he had lost not just a lot, but everything.” Still, Grady has no choice but to pull himself together and crack the case. There are connections to make, loyalties to honor and, above all, accounts to settle.

Though some spread around the middle slows the action a bit, Heywood’s colorful cast is, as usual, redemptive.