I liked this straight away. It is the second to feature P.I. Alex Rourke and has that eerie feel of sinister American wintry, bleak countryside where the unexpected can happen. It does – quite early on. Rickards then weaves several different strands of plot together into a neat, intelligent pattern. He’s very good.
Boston private investigator Alex Rourke is looking forward to the weekend. He's heading to Vermont to visit his girlfriend, and also plans to do some checking on his latest missing person: a young man named Adam Webb who made the same journey, and never came back. But the truth about Adam Webb isn't the only secret buried in the Green Mountain woods. Hikers have gone missing, a prostitute has been murdered and something sinister is happening in the ghost-town of North Bleakwater. It soon becomes clear that in the mountains, who you trust can means the difference between life and death. And Alex will have to make decisions with his heart as well as his head. Because a single bullet is about to blow his world to pieces.
John Rickards lives on the south coast of England. He has written two novels, Winter's End, now available in paperback, and The Touch of Ghosts, published in hardback August 2004. Both feature his series character Alex Rourke
