Viper's Den (Sinclair O'Malley)

by J M Leduc

A phone call from an unknown number has Sin’s mind reeling.

The man on the line explains that he was one of Charlie’s best friends, that he knew Charlie in Vietnam and went by the callsign, Python.

Two days later, Sin and Tana are on their way to Python’s ranch situated on the Continental Divide in the town of Granby, Colorado to help him catch cattle killers who have been stalking the ranches between Granby and Estes Park.

While waiting on Task Force 0 to arrive from Saudi Arabia, the girls find an ominous connection between the cattle killers and a mission gone wrong during Charlie’s deployment in Vietnam.

A mission that occurred for all the wrong reasons: greed, promotion, and a one-way ticket stateside. Now those who were attacked are back for revenge ... but are they taking out their vengeance on the right people?

When the enemy stops killing livestock and and tries to kill a teenage girl at a Country Western-themed competition and carnival, the Pearl Angel of Death must slither her way into the mind of a madman focused on revenge.

Sin, along with Python, and Viper—Charlie’s old war buddies—and the mysterious organization, the Hand of God, will have to decipher the clues to which den of snakes is guilty and who is pulling the strings before the killers stage their final act of vengeance.

In Viper’s Den, the corruption and lies that began in the jungles of Vietnam are alive and well in the mountains of Colorado and the swamps of Washington, D.C.

• Publish Date: 25 March 2025
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Independently Published
• Edition: Kindle Edition
• Format: eBook (EPUB)
• Pages: 300
• Language: English

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Contains Most Brutal, Most Sadistic Scene I Have *EVER* Read. Truly Even Better Than Reacher. With this particular entry in the series, LeDuc takes Sinclair O'Malley places that Reacher has gone - and beats him! - *and* gives O'Malley a depth of character that Reacher will never obtain.

And yes, it is via the said most brutal, most sadistic scene I have ever read. I've read some dark, twisted shit over the years, including books with on screen child sexual abuse, rape, and other brutalities. *NEVER* have I encountered one book that had all of that... *in a single scene*. Truly the darkest, sickest, most twisted scene I have ever encountered across reading literally thousands of books across nearly every imaginable genre and niche out there... and yet LeDuc *absolutely* makes it work to further his character and finally more fully explain some of her own more brutal - excuse me, "direct" - methods.

Then there is the one scene in particular where O'Malley takes on one of my absolute *favorite* Reacher scenes in that entire franchise (and yes, I read them all until a book or two into the Andrew Child books)... and LeDuc outdoes Lee in even that type of scene. The scene here is different than the Reacher scene, but to be clear, the scene I'm talking about in Reacher is the sniping competition Reacher has with the militia leader in Die Trying, where Reacher pulls off a particularly impressive feat.

There's a LOT going on in this book, and a LOT - even beyond the scene above - that will be disturbing for some people, including some blatant on screen racism deep in the book (from the bad guys, to be clear), but revealing some of this stuff gets deeper into spoiler territory than I feel is warranted in this review. (I have no problems mentioning the types of stuff in the scene above, mostly because I understand how deeply traumatizing that stuff can be even in one scene, and because it is *only* in the one scene and doesn't really give away much else about the book. I also spoke in generalities that don't even fully give away that particular scene. The other things I'm alluding to here are far more central to the book, and thus even mentioning them would be too much spoiler.)

This may well be the best book in the series to date - and likely absolutely is. But there is also a lot of backstory here that you need to read *at minimum* Book 4, Eastern Drift, to be prepared for, and really you should start at the beginning of this series and work your way to this book, if you haven't yet. Trust me, the reward will absolutely be worth it, *and* this book sets up the future of the series very nicely.

Very much recommended.