HIGH WHITE SUN

A gripping tale of murder and revenge written by a Drug Enforcement Administration agent and author of The Far Empty (2016).

In 1999, Texas Ranger Bob Ford was murdered in West Texas. Fifteen years later, his son Danny prepares to find his father’s killer. Today, there’s a whole lot more killing in Big Bend County, where sangre exige sangre—blood demands blood. Sheriff Chris Cherry and his deputies investigate the murder of river guide Billy Bravo, whose body is found in the desert with a crushed skull. They suspect the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a “one hundred percent bad” prison gang that aims to establish its own “all-Aryan settlement” in the tiny, well-named ghost town of Killing. The members are covered in tattoos that “tell stories,” and the only way you ever leave ABT is “in a body bag.” Deputies Amé Reynosa and Ben Harper are on Cherry’s dedicated team, and readers had better not get too attached to any of them, as they don’t back away from a good gunfight. The story is grim, but the descriptions and the characters are exceptional. One person’s eyes are “the color of a cold sky threatening snow” while another’s are “flat like a TV tuned to a lost channel.” Amé weaves Spanish phrases into her speech, often but not always translated. “Lo que sea. They might as well be.” John Wesley Earl is the gang leader who thinks nothing of betraying his followers, even his own contemptible sons. “Pastor” Thurman Flowers’ Church of Purity “preaches hate and terror and violence.” Danny Ford, who narrates his chapters in the first-person, was in law enforcement until he disappeared into the ABT on his personal search for justice. Not surprisingly, the blood flows freely until nearly the end.

Tense, brutal, and satisfying for thriller fans.