Hi, everyone!
Today is my turn on the Partners In Crime Virtual Book Tour for the first book in this new suspense/thriller saga – THE PINEBOX VENDETTA (Pruitt-Gallagher Saga Book #1) by Jeff Bond. This is a political “Hatfield vs. McCoy” thriller with hidden agendas, dirty tricks and memorable but not so nice characters.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book an about the author section and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Description
From the author of The Winner Maker and Blackquest 40 comes The Pinebox Vendetta: a genre-bending thriller that combines a love story, cold-case murder mystery, and political blood feud – told over the course of a single breathless weekend.
The Gallaghers and Pruitts have dominated the American political landscape dating back to Revolutionary times. The Yale University class of 1996 had one of each, and as the twenty-year reunion approaches, the families are on a collision course.
Owen Gallagher is coasting to the Democratic nomination for president.
Rock Pruitt – the brash maverick whose career was derailed two decades ago by his association to a tragic death – is back, ready to reclaim the mantle of clan leader.
And fatefully in between lies Samantha Lessing. Sam arrives at reunion weekend lugging a rotten marriage, dumb hope, and a portable audio recorder she’ll use for a public radio-style documentary on the Pruitt-Gallagher rivalry – widely known as the pinebox vendetta. What Sam uncovers will thrust her into the middle of the ancient feud, upending presidential politics and changing the trajectory of one clan forever.
The Pinebox Vendetta is the first entry in the Pruitt-Gallagher saga: a series that promises cutthroat plots, power grabs, and unforgettable characters stretched to their very limits by the same ideological forces that roil America today.
Genre: Thriller
Published by: Jeff Bond Books
Publication Date: February 19th 2020
Number of Pages: 264
ISBN: 1732255253 (ISBN13: 9781732255258)
Series: Pruitt-Gallagher Saga, #1
Purchase Links:Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads
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My Book Review
RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars
THE PINEBOX VENDETTA (Pruitt-Gallagher Saga Book #1) by Jeff Bond is the start of a new thriller series. This is a political “Hatfield vs. McCoy” thriller with hidden agendas, dirty tricks and memorable but not so nice characters.
The Pruitts and Gallaghers have battled for political dominance since the Revolutionary War.
Rock Pruitt left Yale under suspicion of murdering his roommate and even as his powerful family helped him then, they never publicly backed him in his future to claim political power.
Jamie Gallagher was an idealist who left Yale and joined the Peace Corp in Africa. Everyone believes he died assassinating an evil warlord.
Yale University class of 1996 is gathered for the weekend for their twenty-year class reunion. Samantha Lessing is attending with her teenage daughter. She wants her to love Yale as much as she did when she attended. Sam has come with an agenda though besides seeing old friends. She wants to interview her classmates about the Pruitt-Gallagher rivalry, also known as the pinebox vendetta to use as a radio-style documentary for her work.
This reunion weekend once again brings all the families together. Secrets will be uncovered, plots revealed and the vendetta continues on.
At the beginning I was not sure where this story was going. It has a time and scene jumping start that had me confused at first, but once the reunion starts and the characters get sorted, the plot started to intrigue me and then I could not put it down. The author’s writing style is lean and the plot moves quickly. I was not very happy when the book ended, but I did feel the author did not cheat and leave a cliffhanger because he did reveal the solution of the mystery from twenty-years-ago before the ending.
Samantha started out so beaten down and stagnant in her life and marriage, but in just this weekend she takes control of her life and I loved her life decisions at the end. All of the Pruitts and Gallaghers are twisted, corrupt, manipulative and just plain unlikable, but they were also memorable and sadly realistic.
This is a unique thriller and even though I did not like the main characters, I do want to continue reading more of this saga to find out what else Mr. Bond has planned for them.
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Excerpt
The meeting was to take place twenty minutes after sunrise. Jamie woke, having finally fallen asleep around four a.m., to the Somalis chatting in their native tongue over pieces of flatbread. He dragged himself aboveboard, feeling at once languid and jittery.
“Bread?” Abdi offered, tearing a piece from a slab.
“Thanks, no.” Jamie reached into his rucksack instead for a piece of biltong, the wildebeest jerky he’d grown fond of. “Has the general been about?”
“Yes, Josef saw him. The hat.” Abdi made a sifting gesture above his head to indicate the general’s beret.
The day was already scorching, the sky’s blue brilliance broken only by the boiling disk of the sun. The general’s yacht rocked softly in the west, appearing quite large now, its bow sleek and spear-like.
“They’re within gun range,” Jamie observed.
“Oh yes. We are in their scopes.”
As if to prove the point, Abdi raised a hand in the yacht’s direction and laughed. Nobody joined him.
The pirate named Josef, taller and broader in the chest than Abdi, loaded the ten-million-dollar briefcase into the first of three skiffs. Jamie stepped in after, fitting his rucksack into the hull—careful of the Akpeteshie inside—and tying back his hair.
Abdi took a minute instructing the two men staying back on the mothership. Was he arranging a distress signal? Telling them what to do if shots were fired?
Coordinating a double-cross?
There was no use worrying. Jamie had placed himself between dangerous people, but dangerous people performed the same calculations benign ones did. The pirates would keep up their end so long as the benefits remained clear: not only cash, but stronger ties with the general and the establishment of a new back-channel to the powerful Gallaghers.
The skiff loaded, Adbi yanked the outboard motor’s cord. The engine sputtered alive and settled to a rumbling purr. Josef untied them, flashing a grim thumbs-up to the men staying behind.
They charted a course for the general’s yacht. The sea felt choppier on the smaller craft, which didn’t bother Jamie—a lifelong boater and varsity swimmer in college—but did compel him to pull the rucksack protectively into his lap. If the Akpeteshie somehow ruptured against the hull, the mission would be lost.
As they neared the general’s yacht, the faces of his guards became visible—wary, textured faces. The carry-straps of AK-47s sawed their necks.
Abdi cut the motor and drifted in.
A section of railing was unclipped, and a ramp extended from the yacht’s stern. After helping Josef tie up, Jamie slipped the rucksack onto his back and boarded. The Somalis trailed him with the briefcase.
“Halkan, ku siin!” said one of the general’s men.
Abdi shook his head forcefully at the request—to hand over the briefcase. The guards backpedaled, their formation hemming Jamie and the pirates into a corner of the aft deck. Abdi and Josef walked with their bodies shielding the case as if it contained plutonium.
With these uneasy field positions established, the general’s men conferred briefly and parted to form an aisle to the pilothouse. General Mahad emerged.
The general wore his full dress uniform: navy blue, epaulets, ribboned medals. He lumbered forward with a mild limp, said to have originated during the Simba rebellion of 1964.
He raised his chin to Abdi, then spoke to Jamie. “Welcome to the one and true seat of Puntland, Mr. Gallagher.”
Jamie felt the man’s deep, scarred voice in his bowels. “That’s none of my concern. I’m here for Renée.”
The general smiled, his lips fat and sly. “How fortunate she is. You are the white knight, eh? Sir Jamie?”
The characterization stung, but Jamie pushed on. “I’ve been in touch with Humanitarian Dialogue—their helicopter is ready. Give me a latitude and longitude for the exchange and let’s get this over.”
“Your friends have the money?”
Every eye on the yacht turned to Abdi, whose knuckles tightened on the briefcase handle.
“Ten million,” Jamie said. “Count it if you like.”
The general crooked a finger at one of his men, who disappeared to the pilothouse. The man returned with a machine resembling a fax with bill-sized trays.
Abdi stepped forward with the briefcase. The man with the counting machine passed a handheld X-ray scanner around the case and swabbed a cloth along each edge.
He started for the pilothouse with the cloth, likely to perform a residue test for explosives, but the general stopped him. Then gestured for Abdi to go ahead.
When Abdi undid the clasp, the lip snapped open—ten million was a squeeze, even with an oversize case—and a few packets spilled out.
The counting began.
Now Jamie reached into his rucksack for the Akpeteshie.
“I’ve heard tell around campfires,” he began, gathering himself, “that you enjoy a certain Ghanaian beverage.”
The general grinned when he saw the bottle, squat, the neck’s glass bowed in the distinctive shape of a baobab tree.
“This is true.”
“Shall we drink together?” Jamie said. “It’s early, but I find a day started well nearly always ends well.”
The general palmed his jaw. There was a risk he would set the gift aside, but Jamie was counting on this subtle challenge to his manhood—in front of his crew, in front of Abdi and Josef. People like the general didn’t back down from such dares.
Jamie thought of his old classmate Rock Pruitt who’d downed a fifth of whiskey disproving a frat brother’s claim that prep-schoolers only drank martinis and smoked reefer.
“I would quite enjoy that,” the general said. “After the bottle is checked.”
Jamie raised a shoulder, feigning indifference as two men seized the Akpeteshie and held it sideways up to the sun, testing its feel in their hands, poking fingernails along the dripped-wax seal.
They would find nothing. Jamie’s sister Charlotte Gallagher, founder of internet-of-things giant SmartWidget and the eighteenth-richest person in the world, owned 45 percent of the local distillery that produced Akpeteshie. She had allowed Jamie to follow this lone bottle through the factory. At the final step, just before corking, he’d poured out 150 milliliters of liquor and replaced it with an equal amount of king cobra venom.
For fifteen months, Jamie had been inoculating himself with increasingly larger doses of the venom. He had started, after discussing the strategy at length with a Sudanese shaman, with a pinprick diluted in a pint of water. Last week, he had managed eight milliliters of venom—the amount a shot from the spiked Akpeteshie would deliver, depending on the pour—and suffered only dizziness, blurred vision, and severe cottonmouth.
When his men were satisfied the bottle was unaltered, the general took a pair of tumblers from the yacht’s fiberglass sideboard.
Tumblers, not shot glasses. Eight ounces at least.
“To finding a middle, eh?” The general poured each tumbler to the brim. “Two parties can start from opposite ends and, with good sense, find a common understanding.”
Jamie’s teeth pulverized each other in the back of his mouth. He’d always found the rhetoric of compromise disingenuous, whether it came from television pundits or the North Carolina Gallaghers exhorting the clan to give ground at the fringes of the abortion debate.
To hear it from the mouth of a man like Mahad? Revolting.
“To the middle,” he spat.
He raised the tumbler to his lips. Calculations whipped around his brain. Eight ounces divided by one point five…
Equaled six times the amount of venom his body had previously endured.
The liquid was amber, almost orange. As the glass tilted, Jamie imagined he saw currents of venom slithering among the palm wine. His fingers trembled. Some sloshed over the side, but not nearly enough.
In his periphery, Jamie became aware of Abdi and Josef arguing with the general’s men. Abdi slapped one empty well of the briefcase. The general’s men shouted. More rushed to the deck from below board.
The general balked at Jamie’s tone. “You do not like my toast. That is your right. You are the guest, so make your own.” He smirked about. “We are democratic here, aren’t we?”
Jamie ignored the low hoots. “To justice.” He regripped his tumbler. “To justice, and fair treatment for all living things.”
The general guffawed, big and toothy. “For ten million, yes. Why in hell not?”
Their eyes locked over the tumblers’ rims. Jamie perceived something in the man’s look, some hustler’s instinct, and knew if he faltered now—even for a moment—the trap would be blown.
Jamie stared into the lethal brew, waited for bright madness to rise, and drank. The Akpeteshie burned his throat. His jaw felt weak and daggers pressed into his eardrums from inside. Still, he kept his head tipped back and drank it all.
The general and several of his men goggled at the feat. When their eyes turned to him, the war criminal downed his, too.
“…no, the release!” Jamie heard behind him. “No money before release!”
“We will keep it.”
“No, us! We will hold the money.”
A guard wearing ripped denim leveled his rifle at Abdi. Josef stepped forward to push aside the muzzle. Another guard drove the butt of his rifle into Josef’s back, crumpling the pirate.
Jamie didn’t know how long he and the general had. During his inoculation, the symptoms would begin in about a minute, but he’d never ingested this large a dose.
His heartrate zoomed and breath pumped through his chest like air from a bellows—still, this could be the effects of anticipation.
“So, um…the release,” he said, feeling a vague duty toward Abdi. “If you…so I’ll call HD and be sure Renée, er…s’all okay with the money…”
Words were deserting him. The scuffle on deck was intensifying. Josef had recovered to pounce on the man in denim. Abdi was buried in a furious tangle of fists and churning hips.
Jamie didn’t understand the fight. Let them have the money—who cared?
He began to feel disconnected from his body, Abdi and Josef blending into other people he’d known in life, Gallaghers and Pruitts, senators and reporters, grad students and business titans, all fighting without reason, finding joy and enemies, grinding their life into the larger sausage.
The general unleashed a thunderous whistle and raised his hand for calm. The struggle paused. Every eye turned his way. He began to lower his hand but suddenly couldn’t.
His arm convulsed and became some bucking stick-animal beyond his control. His fingers twitched unnaturally. He grasped his throat, staggering back. Froth bubbled in his nostrils.
The man who’d retrieved the money scale from the pilothouse pointed at Jamie.
“What is this?”
Jamie tried answering, but his tongue would not obey, dead and heavy in his mouth. Pain gored his brain. Sweat screamed from his pores, a thousand beads altogether.
This wasn’t the outcome Jamie had wanted, but neither was it wholly unexpected. He thought now of life’s best moments. In Burundi, feeling that boy’s skeletal hand squeeze as he sucked a tab of enriched peanut butter. On the vineyard, fourteen years old, swinging his cousins round and round in celebration after his mother—the senior senator from Connecticut and Democratic National Committee chairperson—had succeeded in her long-shot campaign to retake majority control of the Senate.
Above all, though, he remembered kissing Sam. Seniors on their last night at Yale, about to go conquer the world, standing together in an entryway. Emotions spiked to the heavens. Their mouths came together in the gentlest, deepest touch he’d known before or since.
Samantha Lessing. God, she was it. The life he missed.
Half the general’s men were swarming the Somali pirates while the other half moved on Jamie. There was a gap between the two, but it was closing.
Jamie willed his tongue back into service.
“This was right,” he croaked. “Here, today. This was not a waste.”
And he believed this—dashing across the deck through grasping hands, over the gunwale, into the black ocean.
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About the Author
Jeff Bond is an American author of popular fiction. He lives in Michigan with his wife and two daughters, and belongs to the International Thriller Writers association.
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