The Devil's Hatband (CJ Floyd Mystery Series) - Softcover

Greer, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1583941193 ISBN 13: 9781583941195

Publisher: Frog Books, 2004

Synopsis

When the daughter of a black federal judge gets carried away with her militant environmentalism, Denver bail bondsman and sometime bounty hunter CJ Floyd is hired to retrieve her and the important documents she possesses. But when CJ finds her, she's been strangled with the devil's hatband—a length of barbed wire—the symbol of the cattle industry she wants to destroy. The body count mounts as CJ's search for the murderer makes him a target for environmentalist crazies, gangbangers, police, and even a deadly, genetically engineered virus. This is a first novel, and the first in a series, and it's a worthy debut.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Greer lives in Denver where he is a practicing surgical pathologist, research scientist, and professor of pathology and medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He edits The High Plains Literary Review and reviews books for KUVO, a Denver NPR affiliate. Learn more about Robert Greer at www.robertgreerbooks.com.

From Publishers Weekly:

Crimes against cattle and cars feature strongly in this muddled but undeniably original debut starring CJ Floyd, a black Denver bail bondsman and sometime bounty hunter. Hired by a couple of corporate troubleshooters, CJ searches for the missing daughter of a black federal judge, figuring that his clients are less interested in Brenda Mathison than in some documents they say she stole. Brenda is a leader of PlanetFirst, a gang of animal rights fanatics who've been tormenting some ranchers. The group's ranks also include two hard cases who share Brenda's bed at various times, and who have in their possession a new killer virus that could effectively wipe out the cattle population. By the time CJ arrives at Brenda's rural cabin, she's dead on the floor, wearing a barbed-wire necklace. CJ's subsequent investigation is as much a ritual of revenge as it is a battle for controlling rights to the virus. Greer packs in a few too many subplots (a slow romance with a woman at a diner; a feud with a Denver gangster), and he reiterates too often what we already know: that a black man like CJ knows justice isn't blind. But his narrative is taut and the characters?the tough CJ and others?are intriguing. Though Greer could easily have jettisoned a hundred pages and still retain a slick-functioning mystery, his first work, for all its excesses, leaves a reader hungry for more. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Frog Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1583941193
• ISBN 13: 9781583941195
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360