Description:

From Publishers Weekly

Dean Koontz fans will find much to like in Rector's debut, a contemporary thriller about a couple on the lam. Nate and his pregnant fiancée, Sara, who each have reason for fleeing their pasts, end up in a situation straight out of Hitchcock on their drive from Minnesota to get married in Reno, Nev. While at a highway rest stop in Nebraska, Sara takes pity on a fellow diner patron, Syl White, who's coughing up blood, and persuades Nate to give the man a ride after his car won't start. When a blizzard forces them to pull in at an isolated motel, Nate and Sara are horrified to find that their passenger has died. After discovering White had almost million in cash with him, the pair plan to conceal the corpse in the growing snowdrifts and use the money to start a new life. Of course, things only get increasingly complicated and violent. While some may find the end a copout, Rector takes a stock noir setup and makes the most of it through clever plotting and spare prose.
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From

Nate and Sara, who is pregnant, are in love. Both are fleeing childhoods marked by deprivation, and they're driving to Reno to get married. At a rest stop in rural Nebraska, a man who is visibly sick offers them $500 to drive him to Omaha. Needing the cash, they agree and set off into an ever-worsening snowstorm. Hours later, in near-whiteout conditions, they are forced to stop at a shabby motel, where they discover that their passenger has no pulse. In the man's possessions, they find $2 million in cash. Although honest and decent, Nate and Sara agonize over the fortune in their hands. Their choices and the actions of others stranded at the motel generate a whirlpool of greed, betrayal, depravity, viciousness, and violence. Characters gradually reveal alarming proclivities, and portents of disaster accumulate like wind-driven snow. Rector's spare, unadorned style makes these portents and proclivities even more jarring. A sly and very accomplished first novel. --Thomas Gaughan