The Aftershock Series

SignWave

Once a mercenary, later an assassin, and now struggling to maintain a peaceful life, Dell is marked by marrow-deep loyalty and no-limit protective instincts for his wife, Dolly, a former battlefield nurse. When Dolly enters the fray of a neighborhood dispute and receives a thinly veiled threat for her trouble, Dell instantly reverts to guerrilla tactics. His target is George Byron Benton, a prominent local figure who pushes an inscrutable agenda with the deadly patience of a Gila monster—and whose public life may all be an elaborate disguise. Dell is quickly down to cold objectives: decode Benton’s end-game, calculate the tactics needed to recapture Dolly’s stolen sense of security . . . and execute.

We Make Our Own Monsters

“By this point in the long game, I’ve interviewed a lot of crime writers. Elmore Leonard once read me the opening chapter of a novel—while he was in the middle of typing it up. I spoke with Walter Mosley and Donald E. Westlake within the same two–hour window one Christmas Eve. Go toe–to–toe with Richard Price, and you’ll come out of it feeling like the losing end of a prizefight. But there is nothing in the world like a sit–down with Andrew Vachss.” — Clayton Moore, Kirkus, June 11, 2013

Guardian of the Innocent

“Aftershock is really about America’s ‘rape culture,’ a culture so pervasive that there’s no place immune to it. There’s no safe place from it. If this sounds like an outrageous accusation to you, just check the recent events in Steubenville, Ohio. Young men commit atrocities, and get treated as juvenile offenders, while the victim is the target of Internet threats traced to young girls in that same town. It’s hideous enough to be the victim of a sex crime, but a thousand times worse when the community appears to side with the perpetrators.” — BoroPulse.com, May 20, 2013

Shockwave

Dell, a former mercenary, and his wife, Dolly, a former battlefield nurse, believe they have finally found a place of peace in a deceptively idyllic small town on the Oregon coast.

Aftershock

Killing a deer—what they call “hunting” around here—is like fishing with sonar. Or climbing a mountain with a team of Sherpas walking ahead of you to build a base camp before you arrive. Time enough to take off your oxygen mask and warm yourself by the artificial heat before you have some champagne and turn in for the night. All that’s needed is money. Of course, other people with money sneer at them for doing it. “They wouldn’t be hunting deer if the deer could shoot back.”