Mad Dog & Englishman
1 primary work • 5 total works
Book 6
Spring bursts into bloom-and a whole lot more-as murder-by-arrow rattles Benteen County, Kansas. Nothing ever happens in the county. Then, on a perfect spring morning, a member of the reality TV program filming in a local pasture dies with a Cheyenne arrow in his back. Sheriff English's brother, Mad Dog, the county oddball whose Amerind heritage has produced a born-again Cheyenne, is a prime suspect. Murder is a bad way to start the day. Bombs don't improve it. Notes left for authorities hint at a terrorist assault on the heartland. If the sheriff, known as Englishman, doesn't have enough to worry about, his wife has begun acting strangely. She insists he fly off on a Paris holiday with her before sunset - or else. As Mad Dog swings between suspect and target, he encounters his long-lost high school sweetheart, and a secret that just may explain the unlikely mix of arrows and bombs. It's Murphy's Law squared, as Mad Dog and his pet wolf, Hailey, test a shaman's powers, and Englishman struggles to balance his duties to family and community-enough to drive anyone Plains Crazy.
Attending the Yaqui tribe's Easter Ceremonies in Tucson should be a dream come true for a Cheyenne-wannabe-shaman like Mad Dog. But immediately after his midnight arrival, he is accused of being a witch. Then moments later a policeman is murdered, and Mad Dog is blamed. Suddenly Mad Dog and his wolf-hybrid, Hailey, are targets of a city-wide manhunt with shoot-first overtones. Mad Dog's niece, Heather English, a part-time deputy for her father in Kansas, comes to Tucson to try to arrange a peaceful surrender or clear her uncle by finding the real killer. Back in Kansas, someone has blown Mad Dog's house off the face of the Great Plains. Sheriff English, investigating that crime, learns Mad Dog has been playing a massive online computer game: War of World craft. There, a vampire wizard has made a habit of tormenting him. Mad Dog claims the creature has reached out of the game to come after him in the real world. The sheriff isn't convinced ...until he begins receiving threats from a vampire wizard on his office computer. The ghost in the machine promises death for Mad Dog and explicit and horrible tortures for Heather. And all before dawn...
Sleepy Benteen County, Kansas, turns frantic on election day. Sheriff English, better known as Englishman, faces his toughest reelection challenge yet. The radical religious right is out to unseat him, their candidate an Iraq war hero. Englishman's only available deputy isn't winning him votes. That very morning, while pursuing a vehicle, the hurried deputy rams a school bus carrying the Benteen County teen choir. Englishman's brother, Mad Dog, a born-again Cheyenne, rushes back from a quest to the Black Hills. He has had a premonition that the sheriff is in serious danger. Meanwhile, the sheriff's daughters, attending separate colleges, wake with similar fears, cut classes, and hurry home to keep their father safe. The sheriff believes the girls are the ones in need of protection as election day grows ever wilder. A student smuggles a gun into the school and begins shooting and taking hostages. A private army has seized a nearby farm and holds citizens, including Mad Dog, against their will. And, when he finds some spare time, Englishman needs to clear up one little thing about his deputy's accident: Benteen County doesn't have a teen choir. All this by sundown.
It's enough to make a sheriff wonder why he wants to serve another term.
It's enough to make a sheriff wonder why he wants to serve another term.
