Cam Richter Series

An ingenious thriller of murder, revenge, and mystery in remote wilderness, by the acclaimed author of The Firefly and Hunting Season When two lowlifes rob a gas station, murder the attendant, and then incinerate bystanders who are filling up their minivan, the Manceford County, North Carolina, police quickly arrest the killers at a nearby motel. But a stubborn judge throws out the case because the suspects were not read their rights, leaving Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett and Lieutenant Cam Richter to face the anger of the victims' families. Soon thereafter, a mysterious e-mail arrives in the department: a link to a video of one of the murderers being executed in a homemade electric chair, ending with a voice announcing, "That's one." The shocking video spreads throughout the Internet, drawing the attention of local, state, and federal authorities and national media, and putting intense pressure on Bobby Lee and Cam to find the vigilante before he claims his second victim. Assigned to head the search, Cam finds himself resented by some of his fellow officers and subtly threatened by others. His job is further complicated by the fact that the offending judge is also his ex-wife and now---after years apart, and an uneasy reconciliation---his sometime lover. Cam's questions lead him to a remote mountain area in western North Carolina and a group of daredevils who call themselves "the cat dancers"---so named because they have tracked the last wild mountain lions in the region to their dens, where they have photographed the animals face-to-face, or died trying. Cam must hunt this group and the cats they seek, or become their next target.

A huge dog came out of the woods from our right and lunged at my face. I ducked the snapping jaws by throwing myself backward hard enough to crack my head on the ground. The dog went over my head, landing in a heap, but then whirled around . . . Summoned by a friend, ex-cop Cam Richter agrees to do a favor: investigate the assault of a young woman in a remote area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cam knows the misty hills and shadowed hollers of the park, and his outdoor skills might break a case that local cops can't---or maybe don't want to---solve. Cam has no idea how dangerous his search will become, because in this part of Appalachia, matriarch Grinny Creigh and her extended family destroy those who intrude into their web. The Creighs control the crystal meth trade and own just about everything and everyone in their neck of the woods. But they also operate a much worse enterprise, a dark secret that terrifies any children unfortunate enough to come within their grasp. Blocked by a menacing sheriff with ties to the family, Cam is shut down and sent away, no wiser about why the young woman was attacked and what she saw. He returns, stealthily stalking the Creighs and their secrets, moving ever closer to Grinny's mountain house and what it might conceal . . . not knowing that his presence on her web has been detected, and that the Creighs are hunting him with creatures bred for that purpose and starved into relentless fury. Spider Mountain features nonstop action, frightening night pursuits through deep wilderness, and a shocking finale---a masterful novel of suspense by the author of The Cat Dancers.

I remembered it from high school chemistry, one of those experiments where we made hydrogen. It was more of an acidic sensation on the palate than a real smell, but I recognized it. The pile of spent fuel at the bottom was beginning to outgas. Next would come the fire to end all fires. . . . A private detective working in Wilmington, North Carolina, is found dead in a gas-station restroom, apparently poisoned. But when her body sets off radiation alarms in the pathologist's office, suspicion falls on the nearby Helios nuclear power plant, a heavily guarded facility with supposedly failsafe procedures. As the FBI, local police, and the power plant's own security team investigate, ex-cop Cam Richter, head of the agency that employed the dead woman, begins his own inquiries. What was his detective investigating? And how could one person be poisoned by radiation without others being exposed? Cam soon finds himself up against powerful forces that will stop at nothing to keep the plant's problems secret. The most vulnerable part of Helios is its "moonpool"—the radioactive storage pond that cools spent but volatile reactor fuel and must be kept completely full. Racing against time, Cam discovers an inside threat, which will use the plant's own systems to begin an unstoppable, disastrous sequence of events. The Moonpool is a terrific thrill-ride, filled with insider details about the ultimate terrorist threat and how it might unfold.

Cam Richter, needing a break from his too-eventful detective career, is in search of more peaceful pastures in the North Carolina countryside. He buys a seven hundred acre ante-bellum plantation, but it doesn't take long for him to discover that his new locale is not as quiet as he'd hoped. Almost immediately, Cam finds himself caught up in mischievous pranks around his land, the site of a Civil War-era massacre. When the pranks turn hostile, however, he realizes he's been targeted by a killer who holds him responsible for something Cam is pretty sure he never did. As he tries to find out why someone wants him dead, he begins to uncover the secrets of his plantation and how the land's tragic history is still tangled up in the present. Cam will need all of his resources, including his redoubtable German shepherd companions, to stay alive as he deals with a determined stalker, some very eccentric people, and all the entanglements of a place suddenly alive with secrets and the fruits of a bloody past. Kirkus Reviews calls P. T. Deutermann's Nightwalkers "A rousing, spirited yarn."