In Danger of Judgment
Now available in audiobook
When a covert operation during the Vietnam War ends in tragedy, one of its members resolves to kill the man who betrayed it to the enemy. Now, fifteen years later, he’ll finally get his chance.
Chicago, 1987. Home of mediocre baseball teams, gangs that rule the streets, and a Mexican drug cartel that supplies the city with heroin. Chicago Police Detective Marcelle DeSantis and her partner, Bernie Bernardelli, are working a series of heroin-related murders, and their job just got more complicated. The man who sabotaged the Vietnam operation, Robert Thornton, is now the chief enforcer for a Southeast Asian heroin cartel, and after fifteen years overseas he’s arrived in Chicago to eliminate the reigning cartel and seize control of the city’s heroin trade.
Racing to stop a drug war, Marcelle and Bernie don’t realize they’re about to be caught in a deadly crossfire: another man is circling in the wings, one of Thornton’s soldiers from Vietnam, who’s preparing to exact his long-sought revenge against his former mentor. He’s the last person anyone would ever suspect, and when he finally makes his move, the paths of these four people will explosively converge.
2022 Finalist — The BestThrillers.com Book Awards — Military Thriller
2022 Best Book Awards Finalist — Thriller & Adventure
2022 Pencraft Book Awards Runner-Up — Thriller — General
Readers’ Favorite (5 Stars)
Maxy Awards Thriller Runner-Up
IndieReader (IR Approved, 5 Stars)
Book Excerpt
In Danger of Judgment
Saturday, May 16, 1987
3:28 p.m.
I Love Lucy was wrapping up, which meant that in half an hour Frank could drive by the house.
When they gave him the assignment, Thornton and Arthur had cast it as a vacation, a reward for a job well done. He didn’t doubt their sincerity, but he’d rather have been back at the mansion with the guys. It would have been easier to swallow if they’d given him some idea of why he was doing it, but as usual they didn’t tell him jack. That was the thing about working for Thornton—he told you what you needed to know and nothing more.
Not that he was complaining. No, sir, because working for Professor Thornton was the best job a fighting man could have. He just never expected he’d have a soft assignment like this one when it all began two years ago.
* * *
On the night two years ago when his life changed, Frank sat in a roadhouse bar five miles outside Fayetteville, North Carolina, the home of Fort Bragg. There was a joint just like it near every military base he’d ever been stationed at—a place where the liquor was cheap, the hookers were passable, and people left you alone if you wanted to be left alone. And on this particular night Frank did want to be left alone, because he was pondering a topic he’d considered only once before: what he was going to do with his life.
Chicago Photo Gallery
