Storm Runners

From Publishers Weekly Bestseller Parker's 14th California crime novel opens with an unforgettable sentence: "Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son." The wife and son are both killed by a bomb meant for Matt Stromsoe, an Orange County detective on the trail of his former classmate, Mike Tavarez, now a leader of La Eme, the Mexican mafia. Tavarez goes to prison for life for the bombing, while the seriously injured Stromsoe, after a long recovery, takes a job guarding Frankie Leigh, a popular TV weather reporter in San Diego. Leigh has a stalker, who turns out to be employed by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; the DWP wants Leighand her research on rainmakingout of the picture. Parker (_The Fallen_) creates his usual interesting, multifaceted characters, though the plotting, which reconnects Tavarez with Stromsoe, is clunky. Still, the insights into La Eme and the science of rainmaking as well as the inevitable confrontation between the two principals show why Parker ranks as one of the top contemporary suspense writers. (Mar.) Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review "Any reader will have a hard time putting this one down." -- Richmond Times-Dispatch "Fast-paced and very difficult to put down." -- Curled Up with a Good Book "Intriguing...absorbing...STORM RUNNERS plot is complemented by the equally memorable characters." -- South Florida Sun Sentinel "Pure unadulterated excellence...Parker ups the ante and sets his own new standard with STORM RUNNERS, an unforgettable work." -- Bookreporter.com "Taut well-oiled thriller." -- Los Angeles Times "The action is nonstop as the plot zooms...The characters (are) memorable, the story unpredictable and the conclusion chilling." -- Orlando Sentinel ϡ쯦랠 Matt Stromsoe has come a long way since his wife and son were killed in an explosion meant for him. Wounded severely in both body and spirit, Stromsoe gave up the last thing that held any meaning for him--his job on the police force--and proceeded to hit rock bottom, hard. That was a lifetime ago, and finally the spiral of personal destruction and despair seems to have come to an end. The man responsible for the murders--Stromsoe's best friend from childhood and his wife's old lover--is behind bars and Stromsoe has put the past behind him, rescued from the abyss by a former colleague who offers him a job at his private security firm. Stromsoe's first assignment is to protect local television personality Frankie Hatfield from a stalker. But the further Stromsoe is drawn into this case, the more he finds that the net of intrigue is wide and ultimately leads back to the man who killed his family. As events conspire against him, Stromsoe learns that prison is no safeguard ..