Devils and Dust

January 19, 2015
Rhoades's entertaining fourth novel about bounty hunter/mercenary Jack Keller (after 2007's Safe and Sound) stretches believability at just about every turn. Keller is trying to live the quiet life in a small southwestern town, but his former employer (and one-time lover), Angela, has tracked him down to help find her husband, Oscar Sanchez. Oscar has disappeared while investigating what happened to his two sons, whom he arranged to have transported illegally across the Mexican border. Keller follows the trail south for a confrontation with Auguste Mandujano, the crime lord who brokered the deal. We soon learn that some of Mandujano's "shipments" of illegal immigrants were intercepted by a radical white supremacist group calling themselves the Church of Elohim. Led by a psychopathic zealot, "the General", the group runs a forced labor camp in South Carolina, holds mock "trials" for minor infractions, and metes out lethal punishments. Inevitably, Keller has to infiltrate the Church of Elohim with stealth and a lot of firepower to rescue the boys. Rhodes does a fine job of building the suspense and writes convincing action scenes, he uses largely stock characters and situations.

January 1, 2015
It's been six years since Rhoades' Breaking Cover and seven since his last Keller novel (Safe and Sound), starring the bounty hunter with a major-league case of PTSD. Keller fans will be palpitating at the prospect of a new installment, and those palpitations won't ease a bit once the first page is turned. Keller is working as a bartender when his former boss and lover, Angela, tracks him down. Her husband, Oscar, an illegal immigrant from Colombia, has disappeared while trying to smuggle his two sons into the U.S. Keller reluctantly agrees to help, knowing that when he's on the hunt again, those lizard-brain juices will begin flowing, and he'll crave the head-bashing he's tried to put in his past. So it goes, with Keller tracking Oscar and his boys to a military-style camp run by a white supremacist who uses illegal immigrants for slave labor. As always, Rhoades keeps the throttle down as the action hurtles toward the inevitable, blood-splattered finale. For fans of high-octane thrillers that don't ignore character development, Rhoades belongs on the same reading list with Stephen Hunter, Lee Child, and Randy Wayne White.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)