The Hanged Men

The hanged men dangled in ripe clusters from the bare branches of the autumn trees. They were Halloween dummies made of old clothes stuffed with straw that kids had hung along the mountain road. Warren Stone counted nine of the swaying figures within a few yards of the jeep, including the one his friend Sam Keith had just used for target practice. But that hanged man wasn't stuffed with straw. It was bleeding! And state troopers found two more dangling bodies that had also been alive when they were hung up to strangle to death.

Warren, like Sam, had left the CIA under a cloud. Now, a modern vigilante, he cleaned up towns in trouble, an illegal, dangerous business that paid well. He had come to the Adirondacks for a vacation, to hunt deer not men, but the tie of violence sweeping over the countryside changed that. The three victims had been small-time mobsters; one of them had been caught at the Syndicate convention in the mountains three years before. These first murders could be the work of the Syndicate, but organized crime could not be blamed for everything that was happening. Then Warren was warned; a bullet crashed through the windshield narrowly missing his head.

Here is a gripping, strongly motivated story of people who are caught in the lethal traps they built themselves, and of Warren Stone, ruthless, compassionate, a rebel who knows how to survive.