Twisted Justice - Hardcover

Ashford, Jeffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312089163 ISBN 13: 9780312089160

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1993

Synopsis

When Detective-Sergeant Gerry Stone's teenaged son stumbles home after midnight in a drunken stupor, one headlight broken on the car, Stone is irritated but unsurprised at the folly of youth. But irritation turns to distress when the policeman learns that a car - the same make and color as his own - was involved in a hit-and-run accident the same night. Worse yet, all young Andrew Stone claims to remember is a fantastic tale about a group of men in Mickey Mouse masks who supposedly ran him off the road and forced him to drink himself unconscious. Who but a father could believe such a story?
Stone is faced with the agonizing decision between loyalty to his son and professional duty. Complicating the choice still further is an apparent link between an escaped English convict and a theft of military weapons from a base in the United States.
Stone believes he may be unraveling a web that conceals an international gun-running ring, but fears that in doing so, he may also be unraveling the ties that bind his family. He realizes that not only is he forced to choose between his career and his only son, but that the wrong move could rob him of both.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

On the night terrorist Roger Illmore escapes from the Torring Farm prison and heads for a place to hole up until he can flee England, young Andrew Stone, tiptoeing out of his girlfriend Joanna's house, has the bad luck to catch a glimpse of the fleeing prisoner. The next night, Andrew's car is waylaid by men wearing Mickey Mouse masks. When he wakes up, he's parked in front of his own house, and his detective-sergeant dad suspects that Andrew is responsible for a hit-and-run death. Is he? Rather than turn in his own son, Stone falsifies evidence and begins investigating what gradually comes to seem like a frame-up. Then his superiors suggest he take a leave while they decide whether to toss him off the force; his wife is injured by a car bomb; and he ties in the terrorist with the theft of US siloed rockets destined for Northern Ireland. All ends tidily with a full-scale police raid at sea--and lack of sufficient evidence (thanks to the car bomb) to convict young Stone. Ashford, whose characters usually are caught up fighting their principles (An Illegal Solution, 1991, etc.), again tests his hero's moral fiber by giving him conflicting loyalties. Intellectually interesting, but the plot borders on the outlandish. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Det. Sgt. Gerry Stone of the Kent police is not a crooked cop, but when his car fits the description of one involved in a fatal hit-and-run accident on the night his son Andy was driving, his paternal instincts win over the law. Although hard-pressed to believe Andy's story of a car-jacking by two men who forced him at knife point to drink until he was unconscious, Stone nevertheless begins his own surreptitious probe of events. But before long the police investigation leads straight-arrow Det. Insp. Kemp to Andy. Readers know the IRA may be involved, but Kemp and Stone aren't clued in until antiterrorist higher-ups from New Scotland Yard warn them off. After Stone's wife is nearly killed by a bomb, he and Kemp apply smart police work to solve the puzzle. Veteran Ashford ( An Illegal Solution and 28 other books) knows his procedures and psychology, which he plumbs with precise, spare prose. Readers will relish the neat, satisfying ending with its nifty final twist.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0312089163
• ISBN 13: 9780312089160
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184