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Kidd and LuEllen book cover 1
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Kidd and LuEllen
Series · 4 books · 1989-2003

Books in series

The Fool's Run book cover
#1

The Fool's Run

1989

John Sandford, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Prey novels gives suspense an ingenious twist as he takes readers into the mind games of two irresistible con artists plotting the perfect sting... Kidd is a computer whiz, artist, and professional criminal. LuEllen is his lover, and his favorite partner in crime. Their playing field in on the cutting edge of high-tech corporate warfare. This time they've been hired by a defense industry corporation to destroy its business rival through computer sabotage. If Kidd and LuEllen can pull it off, they'll reap millions. It's the sting of a lifetime. One false move and it's a lifetime sentence. As the takedown unfolds, everything goes according to plan. But their string of successes turns into a noose when the ultimate con artists find themselves on the wrong end of the ultimate con...
The Empress File book cover
#2

The Empress File

1991

One stifling summer night in Longstreet, Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Darrell Clark ran home thinking about two things: the ice cream he couldn't wait to eat and an algorithm he was working on, a way to generate real time fractal terrain on his Macintosh computer. The cops who shot him in the back, mistaking him for a purse snatcher, found the ice cream in the paper bag on the ground next to Darrell. They'd never know anything about computers, or about the events they had just set in motion. When the predictable cover-up occurs, a group of blacks, led by Marvel Atkins, decide the time for action has come. The city government must go. Through Darrell's computer, Marvel, with the incredible liquid eyes, links up with Kidd, who takes on jobs that may be a little beyond the law. She lays out the objective, but he makes the plan. The mayor, city council, city attorney are all corrupt. The firehouse is the center for drug dealing, and the recreation director skims money like algae from the municipal swimming pool. And then there's Duane Hill, the dogcatcher/enforcer who uses Dobermans to get his way. Kidd will simply find the crack in the machine and work it until the city comes down like a house of Tarot Cards. Kidd likes the tarot because it forces him outside his preconceptions, makes him test new theories. All he has to do is watch out for the Empress; the tarot says she is trouble. Is it LuEllen, his partner in crime and sometimes in bed? Or Mayor Chenille Dessusdelit, whose ambition is as wide as the Mississippi? Or Marvel herself? — for as Kidd knows, idealism can be very, very dangerous.
The Devil's Code book cover
#3

The Devil's Code

2000

Before Lucas Davenport and the brilliant Prey novels, there was Kidd-artist, computer whiz, and professional criminal-and his sometime partner/sometime lover, LuEllen. The Army had left Kidd with a dislike for bureaucratic organization and the skills to do something about it, but it hadn't prepared him for the day a woman appeared at his door and told him that his colleague Jack Morrison had vanished, and that Kidd and his friends were the target of a national manhunt. It wasn't the official agencies that worried Kidd so much as the very dangerous men with the very different agenda that he suspected were acting behind the scenes. And he knew that unless he and LuEllen found what had really happened to Jack, and quickly-the next people to vanish might very well be themselves. Filled with the atmosphere, characters, and exceptional drama that have made Sandford one of the America's best-loved thriller writers, The Devil's Code is a masterpiece of suspense.
The Hanged Man's Song book cover
#4

The Hanged Man's Song

2003

In The Hanged Man's Song, a super-hacker friend of Kidd's named Bobby suddenly disappears from cyberspace, and Kidd knows that isn't a good sign. Going over to his house, he finds him dead on the floor, his head bashed in and his laptop missing—and Kidd knows that really isn't a good sign. The secrets on that laptop are potent enough to hang Kidd and everybody else in Bobby's circle—just to start with—so there's no question that Kidd and LuEllen have to try to track it down, not to mention that Kidd would dearly love to get his hands on the man who killed Bobby. But before he can get very far, the secrets start coming out anyway . . . and they're more staggering than even Kidd imagined. Because it's not just about the lives of a circle of friends and colleagues now, oh no—it's about something much, much bigger. And much, much scarier...

Authors

John Camp
Author · 2 books

John Roswell Camp is the real name for author John Sandford. John Sandford is the pseudonym for the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp. He is the author of over twenty Prey novels; eight Virgil Flowers novels, and seven other books, including the young adult novels Uncaged and Outrage, written with Michele Cook. He lives in New Mexico.

John Sandford
John Sandford
Author · 61 books
John Sandford was born John Roswell Camp on February 23, 1944, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He attended the public schools in Cedar Rapids, graduating from Washington High School in 1962. He then spent four years at the University of Iowa, graduating with a bachelor's degree in American Studies in 1966. In 1966, he married Susan Lee Jones of Cedar Rapids, a fellow student at the University of Iowa. He was in the U.S. Army from 1966-68, worked as a reporter for the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian from 1968-1970, and went back to the University of Iowa from 1970-1971, where he received a master's degree in journalism. He was a reporter for The Miami Herald from 1971-78, and then a reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer-Press from 1978-1990; in 1980, he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize, and he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for a series of stories about a midwestern farm crisis. From 1990 to the present he has written thriller novels. He's also the author of two non-fiction books, one on plastic surgery and one on art. He is the principal financial backer of a major archeological project in the Jordan Valley of Israel, with a website at www.rehov.org In addition to archaeology, he is deeply interested in art (painting) and photography. He both hunts and fishes. He has two children, Roswell and Emily, and one grandson, Benjamin. His wife, Susan, died of metastasized breast cancer in May, 2007, and is greatly missed.
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