In Jitter Joint, award-winning journalist Howard Swindle delivers Jeb Quinlin, a Dallas homicide detective combating crime-and his own personal demons. "The weak and pitiful shall perish..." Jeb Quinlin has been issued an ultimatum by his boss and his wife: dry out or get out. So he hits his favorite bar for a last fifth of Wild Turkey and reluctantly enters detox. Once inside, Jeb is forced to confront his years of alcoholism with the help of Librium, hard-core therapy, and AA meetings. But someone is taking the words of the Big Book too far, as rehab patients begin to die mysteriously, each tagged with one of AA's Twelve Steps. Now Jeb is on a sobering hunt for the Twelve-Step killer, a twisted psychopath who's taking the battle with the bottle to horrifying new heights...

A year ago, Dallas Homicide Detective Jeb Quinlin went through an alcohol rehab program that was rather more intense than usual, as he double-timed his treatment with tracking a serial killer on an AA agenda. Now, sober and taking things one day at a time on the job and cautiously but successfully involved with Madeline Meggers, a woman he met in the Jitter Joint, he's fragile but surviving. Quinlin and his partner Paul McCarren's latest case involves the gruesome murder of an investigative reporter. It seems that Richard Carlisle may have found more than he bargained for while following a lead on a hush-hush story. Tracing Carlisle's steps, the case leads Quinlin back to his roots in the legendary Texas ranching country of Comanche Gap, looking into the activities of the Colters, a prominent and wealthy family. But what could Carlisle possibly have found that was threatening enough to cost him his life? The truth promises to be more far-reaching, more dangerous, and much closer to home than Quinlin can imagine, pitting him, McCarren, and a few faces from Quinlin's past against one of the Lone Star State's most powerful families.