Dust in the Heart

<b>There's a killer stalking children in a small, North Carolina town...and the only one who can stop him is the local Sheriff, a man crippled physically and emotionally by a war that he's still fighting within himself. The haunting, powerful new thriller by Ralph Dennis, author of the legendary Hardman series of crime novels</b><p>Wilton Drake's hip was shattered by a sniper's bullet in Lebanon...and his heart was ripped apart by the wife who left him as lay in a military hospital. Now, after fiteen years in the Navy, he's returned to Edgefield, North Carolina a broken man, looking for a way to hold himself together. He finds it in a bottle...and behind a badge as Webster County's newly elected Sheriff...but his forbidden attraction to a mysterious stripper and his harrowing investigation into a horrific string of child murders might destroy what's left of him, body and soul.<p>"Ralph Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment." <i>New York Times</I><p>"His prose is muscular, swift and highly readable. " Joe R. Lansdale, author of the <i>Hap & Leonard</i> novels, the basis for the hit TV series.<p>"Exceptional characterization, strong and vigorous prose, and a glimpse into a place and time that has long since disappeared."<i> Mystery Scene Magazine</i>"An underappreciated master." Robert J. Randisi, founder of the Private Eye Writers of America.<p> "Straight-up, hardboiled crime fiction, written in a tight, evocative voice with a wicked, dark sense of humor." Lee Goldberg, #1 <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>True Fiction</i> and<i> Lost Hills</i>.