Earl Swagger, the gritty WWII-vet hero of Hunter's bestselling thriller Hot Springs, is back in this virtually un-put-downable gothic chiller about unspeakable evil in the murky Mississippi bayous. In 1951, five years after the conclusion of Hot Springs, straight arrow ex-county prosecutor Sam Vincent tells Earl — his trusted friend and former investigator, now a sergeant in the Arkansas state police — that he has been hired by a Chicago attorney to travel to Thebes, a mythic prison camp in the remote backwaters of Mississippi to verify the death of a black man who is the beneficiary of a will left by a one-time employer. When Earl hasn't heard from Sam by an agreed upon date, he goes looking for him and discovers that he is being held in the prison. Earl frees Sam, but is taken...