Description:

The brutal murder of an elderly Medal of Honor winner from the Vietnam War, staged as a robbery, has unintended consequences.

The hired killer, himself a veteran of more recent American wars, feels betrayed by the people who paid him to gun down a man he now reveres. The outraged assassin decides to use his $20,000 “blood money” to seek revenge.

But he has a problem. When on “assignment”, he uses cutouts and secret accounts, and has no way of finding out who ordered the hit.

But he knows someone who can. Someone he has trusted with his life in the past. Someone who has a reputation for doing the impossible. Alton Rhode.

GUNNER is the fifth in the series of Rhode private eye mysteries. Featuring the masterful thriller dialogue and humor that is the hallmark of this series, it is a twisty tale of betrayal, avarice and sex – where the usual suspects may not pan out.

Multibillion-dollar New York City projects and upstate New York politics clash in GUNNER, which also typically places some otherwise nefarious characters on the side of the angels when the body count rises and the real villains are unmasked.

CRITICS RAVE

LAWRENCE DE MARIA'S ACCLAIMED THRILLERS AND MYSTERIES HAVE "A TOUCH OF BOURNE, A DASH OF BOND AND A SPRIG OF SPENSER". (John Crudele, the New York Post)

“While De Maria may have been an award-winning financial reporter, he's an awfully good fiction writer as well.” (THE NAPLES DAILY NEWS)

“What is really almost beyond belief is how easily De Maria has transitioned from the dry world of financial reporting to the wild and lavish world of novel writing.” (THE COLLIER CITIZEN)

De Maria is “a master of thriller dialogue.” (THE WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Winner of an Associated Press award for crime reporting, Lawrence De Maria is a Pulitzer-nominated journalist who cut his teeth on financial corruption at The New York Times and Forbes.

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