Never Count Out the Dead - Hardcover

Boston Teran's debut novel God is a Bullet won both critical acclaim and the CWA John Creasey Dagger for Best First Crime Novel in 2000. Initially, Never Count Out the Dead seems as if it may fall prey to the dreaded second novel syndrome: the temperature is definitely lower on this one, and the vivid, phantasmagorical scene-setting is not as evident. But Teran knows exactly what he's doing, and his strategy is to downplay the initial stages of this Los Angeles-set thriller in order to really deliver a high voltage charge when the narrative accelerates. A construction scandal is about to explode, and the murky ingredients include blackmail and murder.

A disturbingly dark thriller from the author of GOD IS A BULLET and the successor to James Ellroy's throne, Boston Teran.When a Los Angeles construction scandal threatens to blow sky-high, a squalid torrent of blackmail, counter-blackmail and murder is unleashed. Suspicions soar, allegiances crumble, and an unlikely investigative reporter uncovers enough material to bring prominent careers crashing to an end. Behind the scenes, one woman thinks she's pulling the strings: on an adrenaline- and drug-fuelled high, she plots the downfall of her enemies and the survival of the one person she trusts. Herself. Let nobody underestimate the murderous Dee Storey. Least of all her daughter, Shay. A girl with more secrets than someone of her age ought to have. A girl whose future will be forever linked with a dark night in the Mojave Preserve and a small-town Sheriff called John Victor Sully. Even if she doesn't know it yet. Even if she never will. But who could have foreseen that the ill-fated night of October 27, 1987 would precipitate, some eleven years on, the mysterious execution of five people in San Frasquito Canyon? Certainly not John Victor Sully. At least, not until he got the taste for revenge . . .