The Fever Kill -- Tom Piccirilli

Having read and enjoyed The Cold Spot, I thought I'd give this one a try. It's a nice homage to the old Gold Medal novels (note the pre-stressed cover) but with a contemporary sensibility. A man named Crease returns to his hometown ten years after his father's death. He's obsessed with the kidnapping of a young girl, killed by his father at the ransom site. He's also being pursued by a drug dealer whose sweetie Crease has impregnated during the time that Crease has been working as an undercover narc. A further complication is that Chase is married and has a son, and he's adopted his sister-in-law's five or six kids.

As it turns out, nothing in the old hometown is what it seems or at least what Crease thought it would be. Crease begins to question his own motives and in fact his whole life. All this zips along in a tidy 184 pages.

Chase and Crease. Does Piccirilli have a thing about guys with one-word names that begin with the letter C? And what about these issues with fathers and sons, a strong theme in both books I've read. I guess I'll have to read more to see how this plays out.