cover image Throwback

Throwback

Frank C. Strunk. HarperCollins Publishers, $20 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-06-101057-6

The cliche that when city slickers and backwoods yokels clash the yokels always win is older than Li'l Abner. Still, Strunk (Jordon's Wager) manages to reinvigorate them in this tightly focused crime thriller. Cole Clayfield, a modern Kentucky mountain man, has been feeling suicidal since the death of his wife. When his granddaughter Shelby is kidnapped by escaping convict Darnell Pittmore and Pittmore's girlfriend, Clayfield finds more than enough reason to live. He dedicates himself to tracking down the pair and getting Shelby back, stubbornly going off on his own without help from the local cops. Equally stubborn in his own way is Shelby's other grandfather, G.D. Stockton, who thinks that money, political influence and a hired specialist will win his grandchild back; he's willing to offer a million dollars if Shelby is returned unharmed. Strunk knows how to tell a story--his treatment of the grit and courage of a wounded Clayfield is particularly nervy--so readers might not dwell too long on why the FBI doesn't get involved in the case, when word of the kidnapping and the offered ransom is ""all over the news.'' Even with a plot hitch like that, this is one smooth story, as clean and swift as the cleave of a Bowie knife through mountain air. (Aug.)