Lieutenant George Hastings

On a busy suburban street at almost nine o'clock on a misty November evening, two beat cops are machine-gunned down in one of the most brutal crimes St. Louis has ever seen. Did Deputy Chris Hummel and Deputy Wade Childers simply pull over the wrong reckless driver, or did someone target these two for a more sinister reason? Lieutenant George Hastings is the primary investigator on the case, along with his detective Bobby Cain, an inexperienced but connected detective who is ambitious and impolitic. Hastings and Cain dissect the lives the two murdered officers, focusing in on Hummel after they learn that he did a year-long stint with narcotics undercover and helped put away one of the biggest meth dealers in the area. But what they uncover is much bigger than one bitter dealer's revenge, and much more personal. With The Betrayers, James Patrick Hunt decisively marks his territory as a crime novelist to rival the best writers on the shelf today.

Lieutenant George Hastings, a cool-headed, quick-thinking police detective, leapt to the forefront of the St. Louis Police Department when two beat cops were gunned down, and he led the joint FBI/police taskforce that caught the killer. Now he is back at work with the FBI on a new case: Cordelia Penmark, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, has been kidnapped and her boyfriend callously executed outside of a posh holiday party for his law firm. The murder was clearly a message-the kidnappers are willing to take this as far as they have to-and the target and the ransom demand indicate that the crime is politically motivated. But, the investigators are stumped. Wary because of bruised egos on his team and bad blood among members of the young woman's family, and suspicious of the kidnappers' intentions, Hastings knows that there's more than simple politics in play as the kidnappers pull him and the girl's father into a deadly game of cat and mouse. Slick, sharp, and authentic, Goodbye Sister Disco, the sequel to the acclaimed novel The Betrayers, establishes James Patrick Hunt as one of crime fiction's rising stars.