Phil Broker

In the last 20 years, Phil Broker has pulled himself together. A good, tough undercover cop in Minnesota, he knows the difference between a sucker punch and a lucky break. And although he's put his Vietnam years behind him, the grown daughter of his old commander has been dogging his heels for months. Nina Pryce is trying to exonerate her dishonorably discharged dead father and-more importantly-find the 10 tons of gold he helped liberate during a U.S. commando mission. Broker doesn't like the smell of it. Still, Nina has her charms, and can be very persuasive. The only problem is, two of Broker's old army buddies have beaten them to the search. Rich, sadistic Cyrus La Porte has the means, but no direction. Convicted thief Jimmy Tuna has a line on the location but no cash. Jimmy's a dying man with nothing left to win-or lose. And Broker and Nina know both men would kill them for the slimmest chance to take it all. A riveting suspense novel that reads like a thrilling treasure hunt with a murderous legacy that echoes down from the past.

When former cop Phil Broker's naïve ex-wife, Caren, blows the whistle on her feckless second husband, Keith Angland, a St. Paul cop making a cool $2 million moonlighting for the Chicago mob, she unwittingly signs her own death warrant. Unwisely for Caren, she not only shared her troubles with Broker, she also told Tom James, a reporter with fantasies of pulling off the perfect crime. Inspired by the $2 million payoff she entrusted to his safekeeping, Tom kills Caren in a brilliant frame-up that leaves her crooked cop-husband to take the fall. Covering all the angles, Tom runs to the FBI -- "the Big Law" -- and wangles a new life in the Witness Protection Program. But Tom's perfect plan doesn't count on Broker. Hard-edged and relentless, Broker smells a rat and is determined to set things right. But to succeed, he's got to locate Tom -- a clever man with a new identity, a suitcase full of cash, and the Big Law on his side.

On one of the coldest nights in Minnesota history, the difference between life and death is literally the blink of an eye for Phil Broker, until recently St. Paul's most successful undercover cop. That blink will convey the urgent warning of a comatose man who knows the dark truth binding Broker to a remarkable cast of characters -- a weary anesthesiologist, a brilliant surgeon, a wealthy novelist, his exwife (a reformed exotic dancer), and her unrepentant pimp. For Broker it all began when he agreed to take three big-city professionals on a canoeing trip across Minnesota's most remote lakes. One of the three is horribly injured in a freak October blizzard, and Broker embarks on a white-knuckle rescue against time and the elements, ending with a writer in a coma and his accountant dead. Suspicious of foul play, Broker follows a twisted trail of manipulation and revenge that leads back to the writer's beautiful wife -- and a ring of men caught in a deadly competition for her affections. Absolute Zero is suspense writing at its finest, a novel whose surprising reversals and unexpectedly nuanced characters secure Chuck Logan's reputation as "one of the best of the . . . thriller breed" and blows the lid off Minnesota's best-kept literary secret.

It's hot. The snow is gone, the ice is gone -- winter is long forgotten. When the phone wakes Phil Broker at five a.m. on the morning of his forty-eighth birthday -- six months removed from his surviving a January cold snap that (in Absolute Zero) nearly claimed his life -- it's already ninety-two degrees. It's July, and Stillwater, Minnesota, finds itself in the middle of the worst heat wave in local memory. The news on the phone has nothing to do with birthday wishes, however. A year earlier, an angry citizen served as jury and executioner by pumping twelve bullets into a known pedophile -- and in the process became a folk hero, dubbed "the Saint" by locals. Despite protests to the contrary, everybody in the community (including the police department) felt justice had been served, and the investigation quickly went cold. Ever since, strong rumors have circulated that the real reason the Saint hasn't been apprehended is that he -- or she -- is a cop. Now a priest has been murdered, and a clue left at the scene suggests it to be the work of a vigilante. Was the priest a sexual predator? Could the Saint be back? For the members of the Stillwater law-enforcement community, it means that a killer could be in their midst. The caller begs for Broker's help: as an outsider, Broker can be counted on to follow the investigation wherever it leads. But as the temperature mounts and new victims begin surfacing, Broker wonders if he's been set up to catch a bullet for a scandal that threatens to bring down the Stillwater Police Department.