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Jack Keller book cover 1
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Jack Keller
Series · 5 books · 2005-2017

Books in series

The Devil's Right Hand book cover
#1

The Devil's Right Hand

2005

The Devil's Right Hand is the story of Jack Keller, a man tormented by the nightmares he's had ever since a disastrous tour in Desert Storm. Destroyed by his experience, Keller now makes his living tracking bailjumpers for H&H, a North Carolina bail bonds company run by a reclusive, beautiful, and horribly scarred woman named Angela. In truth, Keller doesn't work bail enforcement to live, he lives to the only thing that breaks through the numbness is the thrill of the hunt, the sound of gunfire, the high that comes with each successful takedown. When H&H is required to track down a lifelong loser for jumping bail on a routine burglary collar, Keller has no idea how gravely events are about to spiral out of his control. He chases his quarry straight into the center of a firestorm involving a pair of local Indians blinded by rage and hell-bent to avenge their father's murder. Along the way they encounter a vicious North Carolina cop with a mean streak and very few moral boundaries. Not to mention the cop's beautiful partner Marie, caught between a newfound desire for the just-on-the-edge-of-the-law Jack Keller and her loyalty to a police department with a serious ethics problem. These people, each hurtling forward on their own individual trajectories of self-destruction, begin to intersect each other's lives in a series of volatile, escalating, and deadly events. Furiously paced and filled with unforgettable, masterfully drawn characters destined to meet in a bloody showdown which most of them will not survive, The Devil's Right Hand is a stylish, razor-edged debut novel that redefines the rules of the Southern thriller.
Good Day in Hell book cover
#2

Good Day in Hell

2006

From a skillful writer rapidly becoming the master of engrossing, bullet-scarred redneck noir comes another thrill-a-minute Southern suspense novel full of atmosphere and action. Bail enforcement officer Jack Keller is doing a skip trace on a young woman from the right side of the tracks who somehow got involved with the wrong kind of man. But Laurel Marks' history doesn't matter to Jack—she's wanted on a parole violation, and his paycheck depends on tracking her down. Meanwhile, Keller's girlfriend, sheriff's deputy Marie Jones, is called to the scene of a grisly murder—a gas station owner has been shot point-blank in the face, and his teenage stepson, plus the cash from the register, is missing. But something in the back of her mind tells Marie not to jump to conclusions... When a bloody, merciless killing spree starts in a church on the other side of the county, it seems impossible that Keller's skip and Marie's murder/kidnapping case could be related. But the local media is soon involved, and the mess they make of the situation soon reveals just what Keller, Marie, and every other peace officer in the state of North Carolina doesn't want to three people are viciously angry, incredibly well armed, and they're ready to strike again at any time. Good Day in Hell cements the reputation of author J. D. Rhoades as edge-of-your-seat suspense and nonstop action radiates from the first paragraph to the final page.
Safe and Sound book cover
#3

Safe and Sound

2007

Bounty hunter Jack Keller faces his most dangerous and sadistic enemy yet in this explosive Southern thriller Jack Keller works in fugitive apprehension, and never feels more alive than when he's hunting down a skip. But when a young girl goes missing, and Keller finds out that the father is an AWOL member of the army's elite Delta Force, he knows immediately that this case will be anything but fun and games. Keller is a Gulf War vet who knows his way around the Army's red tape, but the psychological scars from his experiences in the gulf have only just started to recede enough for him to live and love again. No one is sure how taking on the kidnapping case will affect him, least of all his girlfriend Marie, who's counting on Jack's recovery if they are going to have any future together. But a young girl's life hangs in the balance, and a shadowy group of missing Delta commandos seems to be the key to finding her. For Jack Keller, it's not an easy decision, but it's the only one he can consequences be damned, he's going after the girl.
Devils And Dust book cover
#4

Devils And Dust

A Jack Keller Novel

2015

�You bring death,” the voice said, �and Hell follows with you.” Relentless bounty hunter Jack Keller returns in Devils and Dust, the long-awaited fourth installment of the critically acclaimed series from award-nominated author J. D. Rhoades. Keller’s been in exile, living a quiet life in the desert, since his disappearance after the cataclysmic events of 2008’s award-winning Safe and Sound. Now his old friend and former employer Angela has tracked him down and needs his help. Oscar Sanchez, Angela’s husband and Keller’s best friend, has disappeared while investigating what happened to the sons he was trying to bring to America. If anyone can find Oscar, Keller can, but along the way he has to confront his own demons and his unresolved feelings for Angela � now his best friend’s wife. Keller’s quest takes him from a corrupt Mexican border town to a prison camp in the swamps of South Carolina and pits him against human traffickers, violent drug lords, and a vicious group of white supremacists perpetuating an evil as old as civilization itself in the name of God. All of them are about to learn a hard lesson: if Jack Keller's after you, he's bringing Hell with him.
Hellhound On My Trail book cover
#5

Hellhound On My Trail

2017

Jack Keller is back in the desert, trying to make a new life for himself and trying to heal from the wounds, both physical and emotional, he suffered from the events of Devils and Dust. But trouble has a way of finding Jack. When he rescues a stranger from being beaten and robbed in a parking lot, the man claims to be carrying a message from the father who abandoned him years ago—a man who claims to have the secret behind the trauma Keller suffered in the first Gulf War. Jack’s dying father, however, has his own secret agenda, and the beautiful and ruthless heiress to a powerful political dynasty is willing to go to bloody extremes to keep the past buried. When she turns to an amoral ex-government agent to silence him “by any means necessary”, Jack Keller, former hunter of men, finds himself being hunted once again. But this time, he’s all alone, with nothing and no one to hold back the dark tide of rage he’s been fighting for years. When Jack Keller’s demons are finally unleashed, there’s going to be Hell to pay—and no one will be safe.

Author

J.D. Rhoades
J.D. Rhoades
Author · 13 books

J.D. Rhoades is America's foremost writer of the genre known as "Redneck noir," and his biography reads like "Tobacco Road" as written by Hunter S. Thompson. Rhoades never knew his parents; he was found abandoned on the steps of a cut-rate Filipino tax preparation service in Slidell, La. As a child, he was bounced around between a series of orphanages, reformatories and opium dens. His first brush with the law came when he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. He was seven years old at the time. Rhoades first turned to drugs at the age of five, when he discovered you could get high by snorting Nestle’s Quik through a rolled up copy of Highlights magazine. Since then, he claims to have ingested marijuana, peyote, heroin, psilocybin, uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, dried banana peels, glue, paste, mucilage, LSD, DMT, STP, ABC, CNN, TLC, Sterno, Drano, Bondo, Ketamine, Dopamine, glucosamine, Ovaltine, and Krispy Kreme. He hit rock bottom when he did all of them in the same night and woke up two weeks later, hanging upside down by his knees from a tree limb in Duluth, Minn., and singing an aria from “Die Fledermaus.” In German, a language that he does not speak. Rhoades is rumored to have once killed a stripper with a fondue fork and disposed of the body using an electric pencil sharpener over a period of 14 hours. Ii is not known whether the rumors are true that Rhoades kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby, nor can reports that he was the shooter on the grassy knoll when Kennedy was shot be confirmed. He does, however, know Tom DeLay personally. -Biography contributed by James Frey

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