The Sorrow Hand — Dwight Holing

For Vietnam veteran turned wildlife ranger Nick Drake, the war at home proves just as deadly. A contemporary western thriller.Harney County, Oregon, 1968: Nick Drake has a chest full of medals and enough demons to fill a duffle bag. He's been trained to kill, but never retrained to rejoin society. Drake flees to the lonesome high desert in search of redemption and takes a job patrolling wildlife refuges where the only conflicts are keeping out stray cows and ticketing poachers. But then he stumbles across a girl's body ritually placed in a gully. Her murder is only the beginning, and Drake must face humanity's heart of darkness once again if he's to stop a killer from turning even more gullies into graves.What Advance Copy readers are saying:

• Fits right alongside Craig Johnson, C.J. Box, and Nevada Barr.
• I'm a huge fan of contemporary westerns married with a mystery. This nails it.
• Nick Drake is wonderfully complex. His backstory in Vietnam is beautifully (and horrifically) described.
• The supporting characters feel so real. The old lawman, Deputy Pudge Warbler, is as flinty and resolute as his pitiless territory.
• I absolutely loved the Native American character, her language and myths.
• Got it on Friday and finished it on Saturday. An amazing read.
• Smart, thrilling, and action-packed.
• The prose crackles like the high desert setting.
• The descriptions of the natural surroundings put me right there. I could touch, smell, and hear it.