They think they are sneaking away for a quiet Sunday afternoon in their fishing house. The tiny shack above an augured hose is some men’s escape from whining kids and a nagging wife. Here they can kick back, have a couple of beers. Vikings on the tube. A nap between strikes. It couldn’t be better. But they hadn’t reckoned with the coming of the Ice Lord.

In the Ice Lord, the ninth book in the Hastings series, Tom finds himself up against a killer who haunts the fishing houses on Border’s Lake. Tom spots the first burning house from his back deck, and is forever sucked into a world of vengeance and greed where it will take all his wiles to stay on top of thieving thugs, wisecracking bullies, two women who want his love, and a solemn murderer who believes he is carrying out God’s will.

The ninth book also brings back Hastings series favorites: Henry, the small town café philosopher; the beautiful Julie, Tom’s love from The Towers; and the irrepressible Izzy Felton, a sharp-eyed investigator holding her own in a man’s world. It’s she who asks the troubling question: What was that foreign object jammed into the fishing house’s heating vent?

The January ice will never feel so chilly again.

TESTIMONIAL:

Just finished Ice Lord. You really remind me of Patricia Cromwell and I'm a huge fan.

Couldn't put it down...was up this morning around 2:00 a.m. and I'm reading away. Love the

characters, the development of the plot.

  You are an incredible writer. I just kept thinking all the way through the book. "How do you

acknowledge what people are thinking?" Even if fiction.

  Sharon Middleton, Austin Texas