Once I got into the story I become personally involved with the characters and found myself feeling nervous when starting a new chapter, as I just knew major trouble was coming and I really wanted Keith and Annie to make their escape. When I was ready to stop reading for the evening, I had to be careful not to even glance at the next page otherwise I would keep ending up reading just 'one more chapter'. Once the real trouble started, I had no choice but to read straight on through to the end, even though it took me into the early hours of the next morning.

FROM THE DUST JACKET:
From the bestselling author of The General's Daughter and The Gold Coast comes what may be Nelson DeMille's best novel yet, a bittersweet story of recaptured youth and reclaimed love, with all the honed-steel suspense that signifies the trademark of this author.

Keith Landry has lived long enough to have seen the end of the cold war; a war fought without uniforms or rules, a war that has claimed his career and his soul. Now, he has come home to Spencerville, a town in the American heartland that is both familiar and strange, a town as tarnished as Landry himself.

But for Landry, Spencerville has one attraction that time has not corrupted. Her name is Annie Prentis, and she had been the one pure love of his youth. Then came Vietnam, and a world gone crazy separated them. Annie had long since married Cliff Baxter, the town's chief of police and its most powerful man, an unfaithful, yet brutally possessive husband, a force more dangerous than any Landry has met on the fields of battle.

Landry has vowed: No more violence. No more killing. But now he has to fight one final, unavoidable battle, a battle that will be both his deadliest and his most personal. Confronted with his last chance at redemption, he must violate his oath--calling on all of his skills learned from a lifetime in military and intelligence service to rescue Annie from her sadistic husband, a man equally skilled in the tactics and techniques of death.

Landry knows he's got to act rationally and with deadly cunning. Faced with a simple, stark choice--a new life, or no life at all--Landry takes the one critical step in the only direction he can: into the inevitable, explosive confrontation that will decide the fate of three people gripped in a fatal triangle.

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The action and storyline keep you guessing. Nelson DeMille is a consistent writer--always top notch.

This was my first Nelson DeMille novel and I loved it!! Keith Landry, ex intelligence officer, has left Washington and all it's intrigues, to come back to his small Mid-western hometown to re-group and start over. But he's drawn into a situation involving his first love [and his only love], her possessive and mean husband, who happens to be the sheriff of Spencerville and the former high school bully. This one will keep you up late into the night, turning page after page.

From Publishers Weekly
Cannily combining some of the emotional appeal of Bridges of Madison County with a riveting cat-and-mouse game between a retired CIA man and a psychotic rural police chief, DeMille's latest novel (after The General's Daughter) has bestseller written all over it. Keith Landry, his Cold War intelligence job a victim of the Soviet collapse, returns to the little Ohio town where he grew up and begins to tinker with thoughts of reviving the family farm. A former sweetheart, Annie, despondent after Keith went off to Vietnam, had married aggressive, good-looking Cliff Baxter on the rebound, but Keith and Annie had never ceased to correspond. Now that he's back, the old interest is rekindled in both, but Baxter, now police chief and a womanizing petty tyrant, is fiercely jealous-and the novel takes off as a deadly struggle between a man trained in the arts of deception and one with all the built-in advantages of police power in a remote spot. In the process, DeMille works in some poignant reflections on the diminishing role of the American heartland and some acute satire at the expense of the Washington power elite; he also manages a nice combination of wryness and passion in his middle-aged lovers. The pacing is expert: there is plenty of time for leisurely scenes, but the narrative tension never flags, and the final third keeps up a crackling drive. There are a few pat and unconvincing moments, and the inclination of DeMille's characters to think aloud is an odd quirk, but no readers, once hooked, are going to complain-or do much else-until they have finished the book.

Intense - absorbing - suspenseful - all of this with a moving, real-seeming love. I could not stop till it was done.

There are some pages in back of book that are as little wavy, not sure what this is from, but text is clear and easy to read, Thanks,
Jeanette

An epic saga of one of the nation,s top intelligence officers and his return to civilan life, only to incur even greater challenges. Excellent read. Violence, vengeance and renewed passion abound.

The cold war is over, and Keith Landry, one of the nation's top intelligence officers, is forced into early and unwanted retirement. Restless, Landry returns to Spencerville, the small Midwestern town where he grew up. The place has changed in the quarter century since Landry stepped off his front porch into the world, but two important people from his past are still there: Annie Prentis, his first love, and Cliff Baxter, the high school bully who became the police chief of Spencerville and Annie's possessive husband.

They're all about to come together again-and rip Spencerville apart with violence, vengeance, and renewed passion.

Demille at his best- a thriller.

Typical DeMille...

Not my FAVORITE DeMille, but still a good read!

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