Cop Andy Bastian is offered a thousand dollars in exchange for a favour – not an insignificant amount in the early Sixties. He’s to deliver Ralph, the brilliant son of wealthy parents, to Kansas to be detained in a mental health facility. It’s a long journey from California, but they don’t get far before it’s clear they’re being followed. Initially suspecting the boy’s father is merely keeping a close eye, it quickly becomes clear that something much more sinister is afoot. Just who is trying to get to them? And can he get Ralph safely to the asylum before they do? Praise for Richard Wormser ‘Realistically told… carefully controlled, fast paced’ – Kirkus Reviews Richard Wormser (1908-1977) was an award-winning American author best known for pulp fiction, crime and Westerns. Originally from New York City, he moved to California to become a rancher in the 1930s, before eventually settling in Arizona with his wife.
Author
Richard Edward Wormser was an American writer of pulp fiction, detective fiction, screenplays, and Westerns, some of it written using the pseudonym of Ed Friend. He is estimated to have written 300 short stories, 200 novelettes, 12 books, many screenplays and stories turned into screenplays and a cookbook Southwest Cookery or At Home on the Range. After graduating from Princeton University he became a prolific writer of pulp fiction under his own name, the pen name of Conrad Gerson, and wrote seventeen Nick Carter novels for Street & Smith. Wormser's first crime fiction novel was The Man with the Wax Face in 1934. His first Western novel was The Lonesome Quarter in 1951. During World War II he served as a forest ranger. Wormser won Western Spur Awards for juvenile fiction for Ride a Northbound Horse in 1964, and for The Black Mustanger in 1971. He also won an Edgar award for best original paperback novel for The Invader in 1973.
