Cry Wolf: A Novel

by Tami Hoag

Overview

The scream heard by no one is the deadliest.

In the rural parishes of Louisiana's French Triangle, young women are disappearing one by one, only to turn up on the banks of the bayou, strangled and cast aside where they are sure to be found. But there is one trophy the killer prizes above all others, one woman who must be silenced forever....

Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage—and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape. Once before, Laurel's cries against a monstrous evil went unanswered. Who will listen now?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781984821041
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Series:	Bayou , #2
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	151,770
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Bestselling author Tami Hoag’s novels have appeared regularly on national bestseller lists since the publication of her first book in 1988. She lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

Prologue


The bateau slides through the still waters of the bayou. Still, black waters as dark as the night sky. As dark as the heart of a killer. In the water stand the cypress, rank upon rank, tall sentinels as motionless and silent as death. Behind them, on the banks, the weeping willows, boughs bowed as if by grief, and the live oak with their twisted trunks and gnarled branches, looking like enchanted things eternally frozen in a moment of agony. And from their contorted limbs hangs the moss, gray and dusty and tattered, like old feather boas left to rot in the attic of some long-forgotten, long-ruined mansion.

All is gray and black in the night in the swamp. The absence of light, the reflection of light. A sliver of moon is wedged between high clouds, then disappears. Stillness descends all around as the boat passes. Eyes peer out from the reeds, from the trees, from just above the surface of the water Night is the time of the hunter and the hunted. But all the creatures wait as the bateau slips past them, its motor purring, low and throaty, like a panther's growl. The air of expectation thickens like the mist that hovers between the trunks of the tupelo and sweet gum trees.

One predator has struck the night, cunning and vicious with no motivation but the thrill of holding another's life and savoring the power to snuff it out. The creatures of the swamp watch as the predator passes, as the scent of fresh blood mingles with the rank, metallic aroma of the bayou1 and the sweet perfume of wild honeysuckle, jasmine, and verbena.

The motor dies. The boat skirts a raft of water hyacinth noses through the cattails and lily pads, and sidles up to the muddy bank, where ferns and creepers grow in a tangled skein. Somewhere in the distance a scream tears through the fabric of the night. Like an echo. Like a memory. The predator smiles, fondly, slyly, thinking not of the nutria that issued the sound, but of the woman lying dead on the floor of the bateau.

Another kill. Another rush. Another dizzying high. Power, more seductive than sex, more addictive than cocaine. Blood, warm and silky, sweet as wine. The pulse of life rushing with fear, pounding, frantic . . . ebbing, dying.

The body is dragged to the bank, left near the end of a crushed clamshell path that glows powdery white as the moon flashes down once again like a searchlight—there and gone, there and gone. Its beam illuminates a dark head of hair, damp and disheveled with no trace of the style that had been so painstakingly sculpted and sprayed hours ago; a face, ghostly pale, cheeks rouged clownishly, lipstick smeared, mouth slack, eyes open and staring, unseeing, up at the heavens. Looking for mercy, looking for deliverance. Too late for either.

She will be found. In a day, maybe two. Fishermen will come to fill their creels with bream, bluegill, sac-a-lait. They will find her. But none will find her killer.

Too cunning, too clever, beyond the laws of man, outside the realm of suspicion this predator stalks...

Editorial Reviews

"A master of the genre."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

As in her last romantic mystery, Still Waters , Hoag creates a pair of lovers who are so awful that they deserve each other. But this time she factors in an offensive theme: bad boys are to be tolerated, but bad girls are to be raped, mutilated and strangled. The ``bad boy'' is the hero, horror writer Jack Boudreaux. With antics like crashing a Corvette and swatting a smarmy evangelist preacher with a bag of fish, Jack charms Laurel Chandler. Laurel has returned to her hometown, Bayou Breaux, La., to lick her wounds after she blew a case involving child sexual abuse, lost her public prosecutor's job and suffered a breakdown. But matters are grim on the home front, where a serial killer is haunting young women, and Savannah, Laurel's man-loving sister, is becoming increasingly unstable. Despite Laurel's anguish over losing her child abuse case, her reaction to Savannah's problem--also rooted in abuse by a stepfather--is, ``If I'd known, I don't think I would have come back now.'' Eventually Savannah sniffs around the wrong man and is murdered. Then Laurel is all tears and determination to find the killer. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly