Joe Hunter Series by Matt Hilton

The electrifying debut of ex-military officer and all-around tough guy Joe Hunter, who is on the trail of his missing and estranged brother . . . and the madman who may have taken him Joe Hunter solves problems. Or, as he likes to put it, he's "the weapon sent in when all the planning is done and all that's left is the ass kicking." And as a former military operative and ex-CIA agent, he's good at what he does. But when he's told that his brother—with whom he hasn't been on the best of terms—has disappeared, he learns that everything he's faced before is child's play compared to what's coming. Tubal Cain is a killer—smart, stealthy, and arrogant—but he's also sentimental. His most precious possession is the set of knives he uses, and when one of them (his favorite Bowie) is stolen along a deserted stretch of highway, Cain will stop at nothing to get it back. Unfortunately for Hunter, the thief is his brother, a man who has been on the run from his own mis-takes but is now in the crosshairs of a seriously deranged man. To find his brother, Hunter must find Cain, and the chase takes all three men on a hair-raising journey across the country to a barren spot in the American Southwest, where bones have become nothing more than dead men's dust. With its cinematic pacing, nonstop thrills, and strong, charismatic hero, Dead Men's Dust introduces Matt Hilton as a powerful and irresistible new voice in thriller fiction. From Publishers WeeklyHilton's energetic but disjointed debut introduces British ex-soldier Joe Hunter, who after 14 years in counterterrorism now spends his time protecting those who need his help, as part hired muscle and part vigilante. Joe reluctantly agrees to track down his wayward half-brother, John Telfer, after his sister-in-law explains that her husband skipped out on the family and headed for America. As Joe and his friend Jared Rink Rington follow John's trail from Arkansas to the Mojave Desert, they come to realize that John's troubles run deeper than just unpaid debts. Interspersed are the musings of Tubal Cain, a man who claims to be the most prolific undetected serial murderer in America. When Cain's path overlaps with John's, it's up to Joe to bring his brother home alive and put a stop to Cain's spree. Hilton has an eye for action and gore, but can't quite wrangle his unwieldy plot. Hopefully, some of the many unanswered questions left at the end will be answered in the sequel. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistThe first novel in a series sometimes gets off to a shaky start before finding its stride. That’s the case with Dead Men’s Dust, which introduces Joe Hunter, retired special-ops hunter of terrorists turned knight errant. In his debut, Joe travels from England to the U.S. to track down his ne’er-do-well half-brother, John, who is on the run from gangsters. The trail leads to Southern California, but Joe finds that John is also somehow connected to a serial killer. Of course, mayhem ensues. The story is clunky and the dialogue often leaden until John and Tubal Cain, the serial killer, take the stage. Cain is a boyishly handsome, often charming, over-the-top sociopath driven to surpass Ted Bundy as America’s most notorious, and his verbal sparring with John is slickly done and even funny. But Cain is also scary in a Hannibal Lecter way, and even Joe Hunter may have met his match. As Hilton and Hunter hit their stride, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher could have some worthy competition. --Thomas Gaughan

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Published: 2009