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    Rolling Thunder
    Rolling Thunder
    Rolling Thunder
    Ebook125 pages2 hours

    Rolling Thunder

    By Paul Lederer

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    A settler returns to the town he founded to burn it to the ground

    When Tom Quinn first came to the little patch of prairie that would become Stratton, it wasn’t paradise, but it was close. The town he built there was beautiful in a humble way, an honest Western village where hardworking settlers came to make new lives. When Tom moved on, he left a happy town behind him. And then a man called Shelley Peebles came and turned it into hell.

    Backed up by a gang of hired guns, Peebles pushed out the small landowners, using money and muscle to corrupt the village and its people. Only one man stood in his way—the veteran gunman Tyler Holt—and so Peebles used his influence to have Holt lynched. This outrage brings Quinn back to the town he loved so much—not to save it, but to wipe it off the earth.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 27, 2014
    ISBN9781480487888
    Rolling Thunder
    Author

    Paul Lederer

    Paul Lederer spent much of his childhood and young adult life in Texas. He worked for years in Asia and the Middle East for a military intelligence arm. Under his own name, he is best known for Tecumseh and the Indian Heritage Series, which focuses on American Indian life. He believes that the finest Westerns reflect ordinary people caught in unusual and dangerous circumstances, trying their best to act with honor.

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    Reviews for Rolling Thunder

    4/5

    66 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Another great entry in an entertaining series. I love Ceepak and Danny (Ceepak Jr.) This case has the two following up on the suspicious death of the wife of the owner of the new roller coaster ride, Rolling Thunder. Her death is determined to be a heart attack, but then the girlfriend of the coaster owner is found dismembered. I love how in these books Danny seems to be everyone's friend or "buddy".
    • 5/5
      If you like wonderful characters, action sequences that can curl your hair, and a delicious sense of humor, you can't go wrong with Chris Grabenstein's Ceepak and Boyle mystery series. Ceepak is the straight arrow, "an ex-military man who looks like he could still jump out of a helicopter with a Humvee strapped to his back." Young Danny Boyle looks up to him as a father figure, and he's the older man's Watson-like sidekick who takes us through their investigations. Danny has been learning and taking on more responsibility with each book, and it's a pleasure to watch him grow. Even Ceepak the Magnificent is slowly being revealed-- mostly through the presence of his no-good father, Joe. Once you learn about Joe, you know why straight-and-narrow Ceepak doesn't contradict people when they denigrate their parents.Grabenstein is an expert with his fast-paced stories, and Rolling Thunder is no exception. The problem in this installment is the O'Malley clan. Most of the O'Malleys are unpleasant (starting with the father), most of them have a motive for committing the crimes, but it takes time for Ceepak and Boyle to work their way through them-- and that clock is ticking away precious minutes.New Jersey seems to have its own special breed of mystery writers with a wonderful sense of humor. Chris Grabenstein, Brad Parks, and Jeffrey Cohen immediately spring to mind. Whenever I need a break from the psychologically dark crime fiction that I read, I know I can journey to Sea Haven to experience a fun and exciting investigation with two of my favorite policemen: John Ceepak and Danny Boyle.
    • 4/5
      I love this series set at the New Jersey shore! This was one of the better ones in the series, too. Straight-arrow Iraq war vet John Ceepak of the Sea Haven PD is back with his sidekick Officer Danny Boyle, whose irreverent first-person narration makes for great reading. As a new roller-coaster opens on Pier 4, the wife of the coaster's developer has a heart attack on the first run. Or is it a heart attack? Then a beautiful woman is brutally killed (no doubt that this one is murder) and Ceepak & Danny must find out what's going on.The atmosphere of the Jersey Shore permeates the whole book, from the putt-putt miniature golf to the tacky boardwalk eateries. Love it!
    • 5/5
      It is so much fun to fall back into the world of Ceepak and Boyle. The Jersey Shore is so vividly drawn that I would swear I've been there, except for the fact that I've never set foot in the state!This time round Danny and Ceepak are at the grand opening of a new ride on the boardwalk, an old-fashioned wooden roller coaster called, you guessed it, Rolling Thunder. The owner and his family are taking the first ride and have just started into the second hill when the wife suffers a heart attack. Although it appears to be natural causes, questions arise when the coaster owners "girl friend" turns up dead. I absolutely love these characters, Ceepak has relaxed a little but not a lot from the first books but the changes in Danny Boyle have been wonderful to watch. He has basically grown from a cocky teenager (even though he is over 20 when the series starts his behavior is very immature) to a responsible police officer who is learning from his older partner. They make a fascinating contrast as well as a smooth partnership. Can't wait for the next in the series.
    • 4/5
      After a summer of audiobooks and a busy fall, I'm beginning to catch up on my reading and to get up to date on some of my favorite fictional characters. These would definitely include Danny Boyle and John Ceepak, local cops in "sunny, funderful" Sea Haven, NJ. Danny, who narrates the books, is a local boy who more or less drifted into police work. Under Ceepak's expert tutelage, Danny is becoming a better detective and a better man with every book in the series.

      One thing that sets this series apart from most of the police procedurals I read is Danny's status as a hometown cop. Quite often, the victims, suspects, and perpetrators, as well as many of the witnesses, are people Danny went to high school with or their parents or siblings. This makes for a completely different police-citizen relationship than one might find in, say, a Michael Connelly book. Danny's hometown status also means that he has something to contribute when he and outsider Ceepak are investigating a crime, which keeps their relationship from being just another "great detective and bumbling sidekick."

      In ROLLING THUNDER, a sudden death mars the opening day of a new rollercoaster and gives Danny an opportunity for heroism. But suspicions soon arise: was the death really a heart attack? When a local good-time girl is found dead, Ceepak and Danny must unravel a tangled web of relationships == family and sexual -- among Sea Haven's wealthy and politically connected developers. Maybe it's because I'm personally terrified of carnival rides, but Chris Grabenstein writes some of the most heart-stopping climactic scenes I've ever read, and the situation that occurs at the end of ROLLING THUNDER is one of his best.

      If you're new to Chris Grabenstein's work, ROLLING THUNDER can certainly stand on its own, but once you've read it I guarantee you'll be seeking out the earlier volumes in the series! Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      Chris Grabenstein always takes me to the Jersey shore for an escapist interlude that is filled with excitement, fun and laughter. Is there a better time to be had than that? These interludes are few and far between that is my only complaint.
    • 5/5
      Each book in the series does stand alone so don't worry too much if you've read them out of order. That being said, however, you won't fully appreciate the story if you don't know the background of Ceepak and his father, of Danny and Sea Haven, of Ceepak and Danny's earlier "adventures" because the book is nearly equally about exploring these characters and their motivations and solving a crime/mystery.It is a decent mystery too... lots of suspense and frustration with the roadblocks Danny and Ceepak have to overcome (interfering officials and rich citizens). And there is a little vein of humor throughout the whole story - particularly when Danny communicates with a suspect, or about people in Sea Haven.All in all, an excellent addition to the Danny & Ceepak world.
    • 4/5
      I always enjoy this series! This one doesn't disappoint, and may actually be moving the characters along even more than usual.

    Book preview

    Rolling Thunder - Paul Lederer

    ONE

    It was a sad and miserable day made more miserable by the steady fall of the cold rain across the graveyard. The aspen trees clustering near to the plot trembled in the gusting wind. Tyler Holt, buried six feet deep in the ground, felt none of it, saw none of it.

    Someone had burned his name into a flat piece of wood, using a poker iron or some such instrument, and tacked it to an upright pole at the head of the grave. The marker wouldn’t last long, nor would memory of Tyler. But I stood there now, remembering him, as the heavy drops of rain fell, slapping at the black slicker I wore.

    I heard the press of approaching footsteps against the debris of the untended graveyard and my hand dropped automatically to the walnut grips of my holstered Colt revolver. I did not draw in that split second as had once been my reflexive habit, and was relieved that I had not when I saw the person who was approaching, her face half-hidden under a dark-red hood, her mouth grim, her blue eyes unhappy and angry at once. I lowered my hand and waited for Mary Ford to approach me through the strengthening rain, her small boots tentative over the rough ground, her fists clenched.

    ‘Don’t do it, Tom,’ she said, halting a yard from me, the rain screening her young face. ‘Don’t kill my brothers. It wasn’t their doing despite what you may have heard.’

    ‘I haven’t heard anything except that Tyler was shot down by a mob,’ I said. The gusting wind was rattling the branches of the forlorn trees now, and rivulets of cold water snaked down the slope of the tiny graveyard. Distantly, thunder boomed above the Rocky Mountain peaks, their heads hidden in the massed clouds.

    ‘My brothers weren’t there,’ Mary said urgently. Her arms lifted slightly and for a moment her fingers stretched out as if she would take my sleeve. Her eyes searched mine, looking for belief. ‘It was the whole town … that mob that went to Tyler’s ranch and killed him.’ She waited for my response. Lightning crackled behind her, illuminating her starkly, briefly, and then a second heavy peal of thunder rolled across the dark land.

    ‘Please, Tom, don’t kill Ben and William.’

    ‘I didn’t come back to kill your brothers, Mary,’ I said, finding my throat tight as I looked into the eyes of the girl I had once loved and then lost. ‘I’ve come to kill a town.’

    The desk clerk at the Stratton Hotel looked like he was afraid to give me a room key, more afraid not to, when I entered the building, scarring the oak floor a little with my spurs in passing. I was dripping rainwater; the sky outside was dark, the lobby smelled of stale cigar smoke and vaguely of women’s powder. I hardly paid any attention to the fat man behind the desk as he asked me to sign the hotel register. I was still thinking about the look in Mary’s eyes as I walked past her, leaving her standing in the iron gray of the rain-swept day. It was horror I saw in them, it seemed. But a woman’s eyes never express only a single emotion, and I thought for a moment I had seen a hint of her former caring. But it’s not hard for a man to delude himself if he lets himself get caught up in blue eyes. I had walked away from her; it was for the best. You can’t go back, a wise man had once told me.

    But here I was – back in Stratton, Colorado after a miserable week on the trail. I was back and by now all the town knew that Tom Quinn had returned and that he was still carrying his guns.

    Something had gone wrong in this town. It had started out healthy and clean, breathing new life where there had been no civilization before. Now it seemed that a cancer had grown within it, dark and virulent. A group of dark riders had managed to threaten, bully and, almost with impunity, kill those who opposed them.

    I knew this because I had guided the first settlers into the region, hemmed with tall stands of pine trees standing sentinel beside long, grassy valleys with sweet water running off the Pocono watercourse from the flanks of the Rocky Mountains, dividing into a dozen nourishing silver rills. I was proud to have brought families and hard-working young ranchers onto the hidden plateau that not many men had seen before. The land was plentiful and rich and the enterprising few I had led here had begun to build with youthful energy – a church, a school, stores and truck farms; a few cattle had been driven into the high valleys, enough to provide Stratton with all the beef it needed.

    Then, from what I had heard, a man named Shelley Peebles had arrived. Looking out across the lush valleys, he realized he was looking at much more than a settlement, he was seeing land that could support thousands of head of steers with the deep grass and plentiful water. He began driving cattle up from Texas before he had purchased so much as an acre of land. With him he brought a dozen gunhands willing to ply their trade.

    The settlers in the valley were forced to sell their small landholdings bit by bit. Those who refused to give up their hope for a new life in the West were harassed, burned out and sometimes shot out of hand on the feeblest of excuses.

    Peebles had also brought along his own group of professional men – an attorney, a judge and a marshal who took office without opposition because there was no one among the young families willing or able to stand up and oppose him. Not with so many armed men willing to do Peebles’s bidding for a few tainted dollars.

    Tyler Holt, rest his soul, was one man who could not be ridden over. A Civil War veteran with four years of fighting behind him, his entire life spent struggling against the harshness of nature and men’s ways, he had brought his wife, Sadie, and their three children to Stratton at my insistence. He thought he had found paradise in those high valleys where the peaceful wind drifted through the cedars and pines. He had taken my hand and shaken it firmly, his thanks reflected in his eyes beyond any words he could have spoken.

    The next year they shot him dead in the dusty yard of his ranch house.

    Tossing my saddle-bags to one side of the small upstairs hotel room I stretched out on the bed, hands behind my head. I stared at the pine-slat ceiling, watching the collected shadows and memories that imagination painted there. I was tired and angry and lonesome. I believed I could sleep.

    They would not try to kill me before morning.

    Dawn was harsh in its rising. The storm had broken and the glare of new sunlight was brilliant against the peaks of the snow-capped Rockies where the light struck first, making them appear like distant, bright golden beacons.

    I hadn’t slept much. All night the streets had been alive with the curses of brawling drunks, the sounds of breaking glass, and twice, gunshots until long after midnight. I stood looking out the window at the alley below me, littered with bottles, broken crates and garbage. A man slept huddled in the doorway of the harness shop opposite. The dream I had had for Stratton Valley when I first guided the new settlers in, a clean new town on a beautiful land, had long faded, the town itself turned into a nightmare hellhole. Stratton was no better than the places most of the hopeful new people had left in the East. Worse, maybe, now that Peebles had moved in and declared himself king.

    I rinsed off, dug a clean blue shirt from my roll, strapped on my Colt and went downstairs. The restaurant was across the lobby through swinging doors, and I strolled that way. The desk clerk – a different one – watched my passing with hawkish amusement.

    It was early still, and the steamy interior of the restaurant was mostly silent except for the clinking of silver against plates, a few murmured conversations between scattered diners. Stratton was a late-rising town, as it would be after its long nightly revelries. I caught a flicker of notice in the tired eyes of an aproned, doughy waitress and seated myself at one of the small round tables covered with red-checked cloths. I took my hat off and placed it on one of the spare chairs. The waitress brought me a cup of coffee without having been asked. I nodded my thanks.

    ‘What will it be this morning?’ she asked, attempting a smile.

    ‘Whatever’s up,’ I replied. ‘As long as it’s warm.’

    ‘Hotcakes, eggs and ham?’ she suggested.

    ‘That’ll do the job,’ I answered. She shambled away, scribbling the order down on a pad. My interest had already been drawn to the other end of the small restaurant. Even from the back, the young man clearing off one of the tables looked familiar and when he turned, a tray of dirty dishes in his hands, I saw that I had been right.

    As the aproned man trudged past me I said, ‘How’s things, Toby?’

    Toby Trammel glanced at me and nearly dropped the tray of dishes. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out for long moments.

    ‘Tom,’ he said at last, resting the tray on my table. ‘Tom Quinn!’

    ‘Unless I’ve got a double,’ I said with a smile. Toby wiped his right hand on his apron and we shook. The uneasy, fair-haired man before me looked nothing like the cocky youngster I had

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