Running Dark

BOOK SENSE NOTABLE BOOK, JUNE 2005

Grady Service is back. And this time the scene is dicier than ever. We go back in time twenty-five years to meet Service as a young conservation officer. He’s still fresh from Vietnam, but he’s on his home turf now. Service is good at his new job and he’s been tapped for an unusual assignment that threatens to be his last. It’s the height of the historical battle in the U.P.’s Garden Peninsula. The Garden had always been a lawless place. In the 1970s, armed fishermen claimed their takes and to hell with law enforcement. The renegades far outgunned the COs who, understaffed and underfunded, risked their lives to attempt to enforce limits. Shootouts were common, intimidation reigned, and overfishing continued. Service goes undercover to expose the leaders of the Garden revolt. He’s as good as dead. With the aid of a one-legged female informant and lessons of stealth learned in the jungles of Vietnam, Service descends into the land of outlaws. The question goes beyond whether he will come out of the Garden alive–but whether he can root out the criminals without becoming one himself.
Full of outrageous characters and the verisimilitude this series has come to be known for, Running Dark is a wild and fully entertaining ride.