Two young girls are minutes away from being murdered by a homicidal maniac intent on killing them or bringing them back to the Rock. Only Jack Beckett can save them, but he must first defeat a corrupt police department hired to kill him and take down the man who controls The Rock, a polygamy colony on the Utah and Arizona border. The maniac is Wayne Carter, a master criminal capable of despicable … despicable evil. Will Beckett, a former boxer traveling the back roads of America, find justice along the Arizona border and save Kitty and Melissa?
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This is book one of the Jack Beckett Thrillers series and starts a few months after his father’s death and his inheritance of enough money to live very comfortably and more importantly, his father’s 1960’s Mustang. Beckett is a tall man and an ex-boxer, who now has the time and freedom to travel across the States, in no particular pattern. He s travelling along a highway, thinking about continuing for a couple more hours before needing to find a motel for the night, when he spots a broken down car ahead of him. As he gets closer, he notices two young women standing beside the car, one holding a heavy wrench and both looking scared about something. Beckett pulls up and offers his help to them, but before they get very far into lo king into the issue, a black truck comes past and a man in a cowboy hat, slows and looks at both the women, which seems to terrify them. They recognise the man, he is called Wayne Carter and is in control of a polygamy colony nearby, that they have escaped from after he decided to take them as additional wives, disregarding their wishes altogether. Luckily, Beckett’s threatening presence and stare, makes Wayne drive away, but that won’t be the end. That is clear to all. Beckett tells the women he will stick around and help them and when they ask him why, he tells them he tries to do the right thing. What allows him to sleep easy at night.
Beckett realises that helping Kitty and her sister Melissa, may well mean he will have to kill Wayne, as he doesn’t seem like the type of man to give in easily, nor quit to get what he wants! As he looks into Wayne and the tightly guarded colony of polygamists, he soon finds out that something illegal is being carried out and that Wayne has a lot of corrupt local cops in his pocket and also a group of militia covering three counties, at his beck and call. The colony is surrounded on three sides by wire fencing and on the fourth by a large cliff, with a cave network within, where all the men disappear every day, but never reveal what they do there. The cliff face gives the name to the colony, the Rock. Beckett relies heavily on his skills as a boxer, to overcome any trouble that comes their way, but isn’t afraid to take or use guns if required. He finds some allies of the women, who help them along the way, including a police chief who researches Beckett in return, before offering his own help. It seems this is not the first time Beckett has come to the police’s attention, having helped police forces all over the country in various ways. The evil man after the two sisters is into far more than Beckett could ever have expected. Men from the colony have gone missing and their wives married off to other men and the colony has some sort of illegal, yet unknown, source of income keeping them going. Wayne is mixed up with something far bigger and soon the police chief asks an old friend in the FBI to help him out and the case goes international!
Lots of danger for the sisters as Wayne sends men after them both, wanting them for himself at any cost and Beckett can’t be in two places at once. The younger sister Kitty has a bit of a thing about him and there could be a touch of romance there. Beckett will be up against an evil man with lots of connections, but who isn’t the mastermind behind their criminal endeavours. He isn’t the brains behind everything, but loves control over women, men and everything in his life, going into a rage when something goes against or out of his control, getting him in trouble with the authorities and even his crime boss. International crime fighting links, a cult like figurehead and the innocence of two young women at risk, all in the hands of an ex-boxer trying to do right! An exciting start to the series with a fairly normal man who receives an inheritance that gives him the freedom to do as he wishes and not require a job, out travelling and seeing America, but then getting involved in helping others who need his assistance. He does a great job here for Kitty and Melissa, and I can’t wait to see what he manages to do next.