Michael Just TEASES You a Little...

I can't resist it...

"Brother Richard liked it loud. He punched the iPod up all the way until the music hammered his brain, its force beating away like some banshee howl from the high, dark mountains hidden behind the screen of rushing trees. He was holding at eighty-five miles per hour, even through the turns, though that took a surgeon's skill, a miracle of gut and timing. The music roared.

Sinnerman where you gonna run to?
Gonna run to the sea.
Sea won't you hide me?
Run to the sea.
Sea won't you hide me?
But the sea was aboilin'
All on that day

It was that old-time religion, fierce and haunted, unforgiving. It was Baptist fire and brimstone, his father's fury and anguish, it was Negroes in church, afeared of the flames of hell, it was the roar of a hot, primer-gray V8 'Cuda in the night, as good old boys in sheets raised their on particular kind of hell, driven by white lightning or too much Dixie or too much hate, it was the South arising under the red snapping of the flag of the Confederacy.
[...]
If you thought you were in the presence of a young prince of the South, high on octane and testosterone and the beat of an old and comforting spiritual, you'd be wrong. Brother Richard was by no means young; he was a thin, ageless man with a curiously dead face — a recent surgery had remolded his physiognomy into something generally bland and generic — and he was well enough dressed to pass for a preacher or a salesman or a dentist, in a gray suit, white shirt, and black tie, all neat, all cheap, straight off the rack at Mr. Sam's big store near the interstate. You'd never look at him and see the talent for driving that was so special to his being, or the aggression that fueled it, or the hatred that explained the aggression, or the bleakness of spirit and utter capability, or even his profession, which was that of assassin."

Guessed yet? Right...it's a little bit of the opening of NIGHT OF THUNDER, the newest Bob Lee Swagger novel from our friend and my friend (to borrow Goodfellas' terminology) Stephen Hunter...my autographed advanced reader copy arrived today, just in time to wash the bad taste of MR. GATLING'S TERRIBLE MARVEL out of my mouth. Release is sheduled for 23 September, and we're going to be working with Steve to give the book a grand DRTV launch. Meanwhile, I just couldn't resist the tease! Damn, he can write!