What of Terry Conniston?

By Brian Garfield

A lawyer tracks a gang of amateur kidnappers across the southwestern desert.

By the time Carl Oakley gets to Soledad, the town is an empty shell. But the lawyer isn't looking for the city;he wants to find Terry Conniston. A tire track proves that her sports car passed through not long ago, but Carl doubts Terry was driving. Likely it was Floyd Rymer behind the wheel. With his brother and two other drug-addled thugs, Floyd fronts a second-rate jazz combo whose chief accomplishment, up until now, was a string of steady gigs in fleabag venues up and down the West Coast. Eighteen hours ago, he and his band graduated to kidnapping.

In exchange for Terry, the musicians demand a half million dollars. Some would pay the money;some would call the FBI. Carl Oakley goes hunting. If Terry Conniston is going to die, Carl wants to pull the trigger.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784084554

Brian Garfield

The author of more than seventy books, Brian Garfield (1939–2018) is one of the country’s most prolific writers of thrillers, westerns, and other genre fiction. Raised in Arizona, Garfield found success at an early age, publishing his first novel when he was only eighteen. After time in the army, a few years touring with a jazz band, and earning an MA from the University of Arizona, he settled into writing full-time.   Garfield served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and the Western Writers of America, the only author to have held both offices. Nineteen of his novels have been made into films, including Death Wish (1972), The Last Hard Men (1976), and Hopscotch (1975), for which he wrote the screenplay. To date, his novels have sold over twenty million copies worldwide.