Bill Tasker Series

State cop Bill Tasker has had problems in the past, but nothing compared to what's about to happen to him. A satchel with a million and a half in skimmed money is about to go walking. A phony community activist has decided to cash in, but a local FBI agent also has his eyes on the prize, a key witness gets murdered, and it's Tasker who ends up framed for the whole thing. Soon, other people become seduced by the cash as well, and as the satchel passes from hand to hand and the body count mounts, Tasker realizes it's all up to him. If he doesn't retake his life, someone's going to do it for him.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Bill Tasker is still smarting from a run-in with the FBI that almost got him killed when he reluctantly teams up with them again on a case involving a stolen Stinger missile. The op goes smoothly enough (though the feds take all the credit; what else is new?), but something about the whole set-up just doesn’t feel right to him. He pokes around a bit and stirs up more trouble than a nest of rattlesnakes: with his boss, with the FBI, with the ATF, and worst of all, with a certain gentleman who loves to see things blow up…bigger and bigger things, as it turns out.

FDLE agent Bill Tasker’s boss is worried about the stress Tasker’s been under, but he has a solution. The governor wants somebody from the outside to take a look into an inmate homicide at Manatee Correctional Prison, and the boss figures he can do the state a favor and give Tasker a break at the same time. Some break. Turns out there’s a whole lot going on at Manatee. The prison captain likes to enforce discipline by fairly unorthodox methods. The psych ward has been known to misplace a mental patient occasionally. A trustee named Luther has far more on his mind than working in the prison library—though the rods holding up the shelves do make very nice shivs. The prison inspector is carrying a number of very uninspector-like secrets. And something very bad is about to happen to Tasker’s next-door neighbor. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all.