Hogdoggin'

Former Deputy Billy Lafitte is a no-good, grits-for-brains, despicable and dangerous traitor Special Agent Franklin Rome is sure of it. So sure, in fact, that he's willing to investigate outside departmental bounds. Willing to blackmail and bribe his fellow lawmen into helping him. Willing to ferret Lafitte out of whatever snake-hole he's hidden himself in, and do what the too-lax government wouldn't let him do back in Yellow Medicine county, just months ago... And Rome's plan is working. Squeeze a man's ex-wife, especially an ex-wife as unstable as Ginny Lafitte, and watch her overprotective man appear from thin air to stand by his family. No matter that Rome s had to bend a few rules in order to make it happen; Billy's end will justify Rome's means. Of course, Rome didn't count on Billy riding in to save the day on a turquoise motorcycle with a beard, fifty extra pounds of muscle, and the weight of a man named Steel God at his back. Nor did he think Billy would go and get himself caught up with paint-huffing, knife-wielding rednecks. And Rome certainly never predicted that a broken-hearted, vengeful woman named Colleen would be just as hot for Lafitte's blood as he is... From Publishers Weekly The squeamish will want to avoid this violence-laden sequel to Smith's Yellow Medicine (2008), in which terrorists framed Billy Lafitte, a former Minnesota deputy, for some gruesome murders. Now in South Dakota, Lafitte is serving as sergeant at arms for Steel God, the ruler of a biker gang whose control over his clan is coming under challenge as his health declines. After Lafitte gets an emergency message to return home, he crosses paths with the FBI agent he once assaulted, Franklin Rome, who's plotting revenge against him. Most of the action concerns the efforts of Rome, aided by his assistant, Joshua McKeown, to catch up with Lafitte, who accumulates additional enemies along the way. The book's brutality is exemplified by the blood sport that provides the title, which matches vicious dogs like rottweilers against helpless pigs. Fans of darkest noir will be most satisfied. (June) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Dodging federal arrest warrants and his old nemesis (special FBI agent Franklin Rome), exrogue cop Billy Lafitteintroduced in Smiths Yellow Medicine (2008)abandons his job as enforcer for a motorcycle gang and rumbles back to Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota. Rome is squeezing Lafittes suicidal wife to lure him home, planning his own unauthorized revenge play. Lafitte thinks hes riding his turquoise-blue chopper to the rescue, but violence and destruction follow in his wake. Smiths version of Minnesota is no Lake Wobegon; the inhabitants are refreshingly made up entirely of the deranged, the damaged, and the doomed. If you can picture the intellectual and physical mayhem that might have resulted from a Jim Thompson and Harry Crews collaboration, youd be on the right track. But Anthony Neil Smith is his own writerand a very fine one, indeed. --Elliott Swanson