Craig Smith_2 Titles (Noir; Mystery) ePUB+MOBI

The author of The Blood Lance and The Painted Messiah demonstrates his versatility with this dark, stylish noir thriller set on and around a Midwestern university campus

I turned thirty-seven that summer, older than Dante when he toured Hell, but only by a couple of years.

Life couldn't be better for David Albo, an associate professor of English at a small midwestern university. He lives in an idyllic, out-of-town, plantation-style mansion with a beautiful and intelligent wife and an adoring teenage stepdaughter. As he returns to the university after a long and relaxing sabbatical, there is a full professorship in the offing—and, what's more, he has managed to stay off the booze for two whole years. But, once term begins, things deteriorate rapidly. The damning evidence that he has sexually harassed his students is just the beginning as Dave finds himself sucked into a vortex of conspiracy, betrayal, jealousy, and murder. Unless he can discover quickly who is out to destroy him, all that he is and loves is about to be stripped away.



A dark and terrifying crime becomes the unlikely catalyst for one man's redemption and another's ruin in another stylish noir thriller from the author of *Cold Rain*

Ten years ago, sleepy Shiloh Springs was shaken as five teenagers were clubbed and shot to death and a sixth left for dead. Now the conviction of Booker, the killer, has been overturned after allegations that his rights were violated on his arrest. Rick Trueblood is a careworn private investigator working for the Shiloh County prosecutor's office and still grieving for a daughter murdered eight years ago—a crime he has never been able to solve. The judge has allowed 60 days for the prosecutor's office to find enough evidence to retry the case, but as Rick struggles to reinvestigate a trail long gone cold he uncovers a rat's nest of intrigue and duplicity with ramifications that lead closer to home than he could have possibly imagined. In the meantime, Booker is out on bail, intending to kidnap and murder the two adolescent daughters of the minister who brought him to faith. In the desperate hours that follow him snatching the girls, Rick recovers his instinct for the hunt, and with it, quite unexpectedly, a renewed passion for life.