Recoil

From “the best suspense writer going, bar none,” a convict transferred from prison to the care of a psychologist becomes an accomplice to murder (New York Times).

Patrick Cosgrove used to think he’d do anything not to be a prisoner of Sandstone State Reformatory. Fifteen years on the inside for a victimless crime, under the care of a warden whose penchant for violence is legendary—surely nothing could be worse.

But when an unbelievably Samaritan act by a psychologist he’s never met places Cosgrove in the care of Roland “Doc” Luther, Cosgrove’s not so sure he hasn’t traded the frying pan for the fire after all. On the one hand, Doc claims that Cosgrove owes him nothing, and seems at times like the most decent man alive. But at other times, Doc’s potential for cruelty seems unimaginable. As it turns out, freedom’s not as freeing as he thought it would be—especially when it might end up getting him killed.

Praise for Jim Thompson:

“My favorite crime novelist. Often imitated, but never duplicated.” —Stephen King

“If Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich would have joined together in some ungodly union and produced a literary offspring, Jim Thompson would be it . . . His work . . . casts a dazzling light on the human condition.” —Washington Post

“The most hard-boiled of all the American writers of crime fiction.” —Chicago Tribune