The Contract

Author/Guide: JM Gulvin

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Who wants Texas Ranger John Q run out of town?

ISBN: 978-0571323814
Genre: Hitman/Gangster, legal/political, Thriller

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What you need to know before your trail

In New Orleans, Texas Ranger John Q is out of his jurisdiction, and possibly out of his depth. It seems everyone in Louisiana wants to send him home, and every time he asks questions there’s trouble: from the pharmacist to the detective running scared to the pimp who turned to him as a last resort. Before John Q knows it, he looks the only link between a series of murders.

So who could be trying to set him up, and why, and who can he turn to in a city where Southern tradition and family ties rule?

Locations

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Travel Guide

New Orleans

New Orleans seems to be the place where if you want something done and someone to do it, it can be easily found. In an office of some kind, close to city hall or in the back room of an innocent looking shop, there are ways and means to get what you want.

Southern tradition and family ties rule – links between businessmen, politicians, gangsters and police seem to be pulled tight in a kind of spiders web across the city. Ropes cross at unexpected angles but the overall feeling is one of claustrophobia, ties and ties that bind more than anything.

The streets of New Orleans come to life – from the moment John Q arrives from Wichita Falls, he’s on a mission to find his way around the city and the corruption that trails around it, not to mention the trail he seems to leave behind and which he senses someone is following his every move. The rain falls, the wind howls across the historic quarter and the old post office which stands proud in the centre of Lafayette Square suddenly becomes a kind of army barracks and hiding place for the criminals.

Quarrie the Texas Ranger works on the land and is part of that land. He lives in the mountains in a ranch and is about to teach his son how to read footprints made my men in th e way he was learning about the tracks of different animals. This is a land where screen doors flap in the breeze, protecting you from the land but not from unwelcome guests and bad guys.

Booktrailer Review

Susan @thebooktrailer

A landscape and an adventure that’s as every bit as good as The Last Count. Second in the John Q series, this is a trail of a Texas Ranger and those on his trail. A race of a read from one dark street to another, to street corners in downtown New Orleans which have so much ornate buildings and heritage but tie back the luxury curtains and shutters and there are some dark dealings to be found.

The heat of the chase as well as the landscape buzzes and blurs the words on the page as you read. The idea of a Texas Ranger trying to solve a crime in Louisiana puts more than a few barriers in his way but this makes his ways of investigating even more clever and inventive than in The Lost Count.

There is a lot of historical context to this novel – outlawed groups and civil war which bleeds into the city’s identity and present day events. When a case is reopened that people who believe in the use of guns and contract killings, then revenge becomes the only currency which will open doors. Guns are the only language people here seem to speak.

The landscape is deeply intertwined with the action and the setting is evoked with style and bullseye precision. The writing is raw and the plot unravels with the rope still tightly drawn around your neck.

The Contract is a hot and humid trail and chase for the truth and you always feel one step behind the truth which drives you on to keep going. There’s a third in this series and I am going to be putting the date of release in my stetson and my reading finger cocked ready for action on that one!