Part of Series
Family loyalties, deadly feuds, and international drug wars are brought to life in Ninie Hammon’s new intergenerational tale inspired by the story of the Cornbread Mafia in rural Kentucky. The year is 1978. Riley Hannacker is running the Cornbread Mafia and he has expanded it beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Teams of workers grow weed in eight states. The strains they produce have become the gold standard for marijuana. Some of the seeds, like Righteous Weed, are worth kidnapping, dying, and murdering for. But their success has not gone unnoticed. An FBI task force sets up an office in Bardstown, Kentucky, and Agent Bradigan has vowed to take the Cornbread Mafia down. The FBI doesn’t know they’re walking into a buzz saw. Riley, Jessie Monaghan, and Willie Ray Taggart tried to kill Jackson McClusky five years ago when they found out he’d fired a grenade into a bunker in Vietnam, murdering and maiming their loved ones – but Jackson escaped. Now, he is back, determined to kill the three of them and steal Righteous Weed seeds. He teams up with crime maven Mama Bert, who harbors her own dark, secret murder, and together they use kidnapping and intimidation to get their hands on the seed. Meanwhile, the county prosecutor, Winona McClusky, and Detective Booth Graham hatch a plot to trick Riley’s promiscuous wife Sherry Lynn into providing information they can use to blackmail Riley for a million dollars, hoping to cash out before the Cornbread Mafia collapses and takes everyone down with it. Will Agent Bradigan put Riley, Jessie, and Willie Ray behind bars without getting caught in the crossfire? Will any of them survive long enough to see the inside of a prison? Or is the Cornbread Mafia too powerful to defeat? Ridin’ For A Fall is the third book in Ninie Hammon’s new Cornbread Mafia series, a fictional story inspired by the real Cornbread Mafia that sprang up in picturesque Marion County, Kentucky, and grew into the largest illegal marijuana-growing operation in U.S. history.
Author
I was born in Socorro, New Mexico, sometime shortly after the earth cooled off. It’s clear that from the outset my parents never intended for me to amount to anything. How could I? With a name like “Ninie?” Please. Fame and fortune do not come to people named Ninie Bovell (My maiden name.) Gabriella Bovary? You could work with that. Even something as pedestrian as Madeline Bovell or Rebecca Bovell or (though you’d lose points here for lack of originality) Elizabeth Bovell. But Ninie? I never had a chance. If I sound a mite hostile, bear in mind that in one decisive stroke my parents sentenced their precious newborn daughter to a lifetime of explanations that began my first day at Muleshoe Elementary School. (Yeah, Muleshoe. The hits just keep on coming.) After a painful week, I had a rap down that I still use today: “No, it’s not Ninnie like skinny and penny. It’s Ninie—rhymes with tiny and shiny. 9e…get it? And no, it doesn’t mean anything, it isn’t short for anything, long for anything, or a substitute for anything. It just is. (Pause here for the inevitable ‘Why?’) You got me, pal, I couldn’t tell you.” I grew up in Texas, got a BA in English and theatre from Texas Tech University and snagged a job as a newspaper reporter. Didn't know a thing about journalism, but my editor said if I could write he could teach me the rest of it and if I couldn't write the rest of it didn't matter. I hung in there for a 25-year career as a journalist. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, but as soon as I figured out that making up the facts was a whole lot more fun than reporting them, I never looked back. Now, I write suspense—every flavor except pistachio: psychological suspense, inspirational suspense, suspense thrillers, paranormal suspense, suspense mysteries. In every book I write I try to keep this promise to Loyal Reader: I will tell you a story in a distinctive voice you'll always recognize, about people as ordinary as you are—people who have been slammed by something they didn’t sign on for, and now they must fight for their lives. Then smack in the middle of their everyday worlds, those people encounter the unexplainable—and it's always the game-changer."
