Blood Moon - Hardcover

Conner, K. Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385241240 ISBN 13: 9780385241243

Publisher: Doubleday, 1987

Synopsis

Rancho Esquon was a quiet little community in Northern California's vast Sacramento Valley. With its green neon palm, the Oasis Diner attracted tired truckers passing through on the long stretch of highway. The downtown movie theater was open only on Friday and Saturday nights to show films in Spanish to the migrant farm workers. And a small airstrip on the outskirts of town serviced crop dusters and private pilots who gave flying lessons to bored ranchers' wives.

Then one blustery afternoon Michael Morrissey's Cessna Skyhawk plummeted to the runway in a blaze of sparks, and Rancho Esquon would never be the same. Donny Cannon knew Morrissey wasn't going to make it when he pulled him out of the plane's wreckage. But it wasn't the crash that took his best friend's life -- Morrissey had been shot.

Now Cannon is hell-bent to find out who killed him and why. Together with Michael's sister -- a sultry dark-eyed beauty who wants to find the answers for quite a different reason -- Cannon follows a twisting trail that leads him to the murky drug underworld that lurks beneath the valley's pastoral surface.

Soon the tranquility of Rancho Esquon is shattered by corruption, violence and brutal murder ... and Donny Cannon, always a loner, is more alone than ever as he fights to save his own life.

A taut, lean, sexy thriller, Blood Moon marks the debut of an exciting new talent in the suspense genre.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Unambitious, easy-going Donny Cannon had pretty much all he needed in life until the day partner and best-friend Michael Morrissey's Cessna light airplane dropped out of the sky, and it all fell apart. It soon transpires that Morrissey's death was no accident. In fact, he was murdered by a gang of marijuana growers, and for some mysterious reasons the sheriff's department is evincing little enthusiasm for investigation. Urged on by the dead Morrissey's beautiful sister Meagan, Cannon reconstructs the crime. Set in lush Sacramento Valley, this thriller follows a well-worn California tradition in pitting the hero against an entrenched local power structure. Unfortunately, Conner's combination of overheated prose and slow narrative pacing provide a tiring read.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review:

A tense tale of murder and intrigue ... true to the dynamics of the region: water brokers and developers hover near the novel's core, as do stucco motels and cafes with peeling paint, autocratic sheriffs and compassionate waitresses. (Blood Moon) is well worth reading. -- Western American Literature

A new kind of hero in mystery fiction." -- San Francisco Chronicle

Blood Moon is a tight, quick and compelling thriller, framed by the crashing of two small planes, and enriched by the heartfelt evocation of the flat, fertile, secret Sacramento Valley where the story takes place. -- David Thomson, author of Suspects and Silver Light

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0385241240
• ISBN 13: 9780385241243
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208