Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | SCD FICTION LOG 10 DISCS | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Reunited with estranged husband and undercover cop Phil Broker, Nina Pryce takes an extended medical leave from the army to recover from the injuries-physical and psychological-she sustained at the hands of a vicious psychopath. The Broker/Pryce household relocates to a remote resort town of Glacier Falls, MN, where daughter Kit is enrolled in second grade at the local elementary school. Everyone assumes that Kit is adjusting well-until she punches Terry Clump, the terror of the second grade, in the face. He gets a bloody nose and she gets suspended. What begins as a seemingly minor spat between innocent kids quickly escalates into a vicious scenario of lawlessness and provocation. Kit's imitation of her parents' violent proclivities has put them all in harm's way: the Clumps are but one-half of a notoriously vengeful clan known for criminal behavior and brutal violence.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
U.S. Army Maj. Nina Pryce and ex-undercover detective Phil Broker return from Logan's After the Rain in this follow-up thriller. After Pryce endures a debilitating psychological and physical breakdown from a nasty tangle with a psychopath, the estranged spouses reunite. Eager for a fresh start, Broker, Pryce and plucky young daughter Karson ("Kit") move from St. Paul to bucolic, frosty Glacier Falls, Minn., home to howling wolves and an elementary school mixed in with "all the special-ed students in the county." When Kit gives playground bully Teddy-scion of the town's notoriously disruptive, methamphetamine-cooking Klumpe family-a black eye, a blood feud is ignited that accelerates with increasing menace. A slashed tire, a stolen cat and a housebreak all lead up to Broker being outed as a former cop-the very same cop who was involved in the death of Jojo, the son of Danny Turrie, Klumpe compadre and imprisoned murderer. Revenge plots boil as Turrie looks for a way to get at Broker-and his family. Logan is terrific on the particular ex-army, ex-cop tension between Pryce and Broker, and gives his bleak rural setting real menace. With a special low "summer price," Logan's latest should easily cool numerous beachgoers with icy thrills. 8-city author tour. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Retired cop Phil Broker finally has his family together again, but he'll have to fight to keep it that way. His wife, Delta Force commando Major Nina Pryce, is rehabilitating her shoulder when the psychic toll from seeing her partner killed suddenly catches up with her. Broker moves wife and daughter north, from Stillwater, Minnesota, to a cabin owned by longtime friend Harry Griffin ( Hunter's Moon, 1995) in Glacier Falls, where Pryce can recover far from the doctors who might sideline her army career. But when their daughter, Kit, defends herself from a bully on the playground, they run afoul of the small town's big family and, worse, another clan for whom the police blotter is like a high-school yearbook. From the smallest event, Broker's vulnerable family is in mortal danger. This is simply taut, terrific storytelling, with a methamphetamine angle that gives the small-town showdown headlinelike currency. Broker and Pryce are on their way to becoming one of the most memorable husband-and-wife teams in thrilling fiction. --Keir Graff Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Ex-cop Phil Broker (After the Rain, 2004, etc.) goes for needed peace and quiet to Minnesota's backwoods, where an old enemy goes for Broker. The remote resort of Glacier Falls seems ideal for what ails the Broker family, in particular Major Nina Pryce, Broker's formidable wife. Usually formidable, that is. At the moment, in the aftermath of a bloody shootout that ended the life of her partner and very nearly her own, she's suffering both physically (shattered shoulder) and emotionally (shattered psyche). It's the latter condition that prompted Broker to seek the therapy of new, underpopulated surroundings. Even in Glacier Falls, however, trouble homes in on the family. It starts with a mundane schoolyard incident involving Kit, Broker's eight-year-old daughter, and escalates in a hurry. Teddy Klumpe, ranking bully of Glacier Elementary, steals Kit's gloves, then shoves her about in order to underscore his higher place in the natural order of things. He gets his nose solidly punched in retaliation. Young Klumpe complains to Daddy. Daddy Klumpe, intimidatingly large, thinks it behooves him to make the father atone for the sins of the daughter and takes a swing at Broker, who puts him down with humiliating ease. That sets off a chain of events leading eventually to Danny Turrie, a convicted murderer currently doing life in Stillwater Prison. Jailed he may be, but Turrie has friends--plus an unrelenting hate for his beloved son's killer, a man whose identity has remained a mystery until now. The information goes in, and Turrie reaches out: an ice-eyed, extraordinarily adept gunman finds his way to Glacier Falls. He's looking for Broker. Gratuitous flashbacks slow the pace from time to time, but Logan writes well, and his people grab hard. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Undercover cop Phil Broker reunites with wife Nina Pryce, on leave from the army, and together they move to bucolic Minnesota to recover from professional stress. But then daughter Kit picks a fight with the wrong kid on the playground, and the family finds itself up against the Clumps, a notoriously evil clan. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Homefront Chapter One It was another March surprise. Yesterday the kids were playing in long sleeves and tennis shoes. Then the storm moved in last night, riding on serious cold that knocked everyone's weather clock for a loop. Now there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. The air temperature stuck on 18 degrees Fahrenheit, but the windchill shivered it down to 11. School policy put the kids out in the snow if the thermometer topped zero. Ten-thirty in the morning at Glacier Elementary. Recess. The new kid was a snotty showoff, and it was really starting to bug Teddy Klumpe. Especially the way a lot of third-graders had gathered on the playground to watch her. Just like yesterday, when she was doing skips on the monkey bars. Not just swinging, flying almost. And everyone big-eyed, checking her out, like wow. See that? Three-bar skip. Except today it so was so cold -- ha -- that her gloves slipped on the icy bars and she dropped off, the heels of her boots skidded in the snow, and she fell on her skinny rear end. But then she got up and studied the stretch of steel bars over her head; studied them so hard these wrinkles scrunched up her forehead. Slowly, as her breath jetted in crisp white clouds, she removed her gloves. Boy, was that dumb. It was just too cold ... But it didn't stop her. She mounted the wooden platform and carefully placed her gloves on the snowy planks. She blew a couple times on her bare hands, took a stance, gauged the distance, bent her knees, swung her arms back, and sprung. Parka, snow pants, bulky boots. Didn't matter. Smoothly, she caught the third bar out. Yuk. The thought of his bare skin touching that frozen steel made him wince. Along with the fact he was too heavy to propel himself hand over hand. But when she dropped back to the ground. Then he'd show her. Skinny, red-haired, freckle-faced little bitch. The Klumpe kid was almost nine. Naturally powerful for his age, he packed an extra ten pounds of junk-food blubber in a sumo-like tire around his gut and his wide PlayStation 2 butt. Biggest kid in the third grade. Most feared kid. Knew the most swear words. King of the playground. Screw her. Teddy scouted the immediate area. Mrs. Etherby, the nearest recess monitor, was watching the kids sliding down the hill on plastic sleds. The other monitor was on the far side of the playground, where some fourth-graders were building a snow fort. Ten of Teddy's classmates were standing over by the slide next to the monkey bars, making a winter rainbow of fleece red caps and blue and yellow Land's End parkas against the oatmeal sky. All of them curiously watching Teddy and the new kid. They should be watching him take his snowboard down the hill. And repairing the bump jump when he smashed it apart. Instead, they were watching to see what he would do. The new kid swung from the last bar, landed lightly on her feet on the far wooden platform, and blew on her chapped hands. Teddy eyed the gloves she'd left on the opposite end. As she leaped up and grabbed the bars for the return trip, Teddy walked over casually, snatched up her gloves, and stuffed them in his jacket pocket. "Hey!" the kid yelled, swinging hand over hand. Teddy ignored her and kept walking, around the back of a small equipment shed near the tire swings. "Hey," she said again, dropping to the snow and trotting after him. "Those are my gloves." Her breath made an energetic white puff in the air. Two brooding vertical creases started between her eyebrows and shot up her broad forehead. Teddy angled his face away from her but let his eyes roll to the edge of his sockets. Kinda like his dad did when he was getting ready to get really mad. He took a few more steps, drawing her farther behind the shed, out of sight from eyes on the playground. Then he spun. "Liar," he said. She balled her cold hands at her sides and narrowed her green eyes. The creases deeper now, pulling her face tight. "Thief," she said in a trembling voice. Teddy saw the tension rattle on her face, turning it red. He heard the tremor in her voice. Little bitch is scared. Encouraged, he surged forward and pushed her chest hard with both hands. She went down on her butt in the snow. Then he yanked her gloves from his pocket and tossed them up on the roof of the shed, where they stayed put in a foot of snow. "Yuk," Teddy wiped his own gloves on the front of his jacket. "Now I got girl cooties all over me." She was starting to get up, working to hold back tears. "Now you're gonna cry. More girl cooties," Teddy said with a grin. "No, I ain't," she said in a trembling voice as she drew hard, pulling the tears back inside her eyes. She pushed up off the snow. "Crybaby girl cooties," Teddy taunted, and he rammed her with his shoulder and hip. Ha. Hockey check. She went down again. "Leave me alone," she said in the shaky voice. "I mean it, that's two." This time she was up faster, bouncing kinda . . . Two? Teddy laughed and shoved her again. "Loser," he taunted. It was one of his dad's favorite words. Then he blinked, surprised because this time she surged against him, kinda strong for a girl, and kept her footing. Doing this dance thing on the balls of her feet. "That's three," she said, still moving away from him but her small fists swinging up; tight, compact miniature hammers. Red with cold. "Oh, yeah?" Teddy sneered, opening his arms, palms out, elbows cocked to shove her again. As he charged forward, he realized she wasn't moving away anymore. Homefront . Copyright © by Chuck Logan. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Homefront by Chuck Logan All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.