Product Description

Christmas, 1995. A 14-year-old girl is kidnapped by a bloodthirsty Satanic cult. Bob Hightower, the girl's father and a small-town cop, embarks on a desperate mission to find her, but his only hope lies with Case Hardin, an ex-cult member and ex-junkie living in a halfway house in Hollywood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #477782 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-26
• Released on: 2002-03-26
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.00" h x .75" w x 4.25" l, .50 pounds
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Strung-out on junk and tattooed with the dates of helter-skelter-style deaths they've caused, the kids who walk "The Left-Handed Path" talk Satanic talk and spread terror through the very Christian Southern California town of Clay. This tautly paced and harrowing debut thriller begins with the cult's murder of desk cop Bob Hightower's ex-wife and her husband, and the kidnapping of his 14-year-old daughter, Gabi. Desperate and driven, Hightower takes a leave of absence to look for the abducted girl. Fresh out of leads?his search has been stymied by a fellow policeman who's in league with the cult?Hightower meets Case, a 29-year-old, severely traumatized ex-heroin addict who is unable to forget her horrifying experiences as the sexual slave of the demonic Cyrus, who heads the bloodthirsty self-styled "tribe" that controls the local drug trade from a remote desert outpost. With Case's help, Hightower goes undercover and infiltrates the group. Though some of the book's early passages seem melodramatic, the tale becomes riveting as the unlikely duo follow Cyrus and his gang to hell and back. Teran does a fine job of contrasting Case's struggle to overcome Cyrus's pervasive presence in her mind with Hightower's ethical dilemma at taking orders from a junkie. The moral twists and turns of the searing narrative are jolting; the pair are even forced to commit murder for Cyrus before a climactic showdown in the desert. Cynical and DeLillo-like in its observations, paced with present-tense immediacy, Teran's hard-boiled prose does not belittle the tragedy at this novel's core. Not for the faint-hearted, the book is as addictive as illegal substances. Agent, David Hale Smith.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This first novel is pretty standard thriller fareAcorrupt sheriff John Lee Bacon hires bad guy Cyrus to kill his wife's lover, Sam. But Cyrus also kills Sam's wife, Sarah, and kidnaps Gabi, Sarah's teenaged daughter from her first marriage to Bob. Bob just happens to be a cop working for Sheriff Bacon, and now Bob must rescue his daughter from Cyrus. This vicious circle is embedded in a dark cult world of drugs, pornography, and violenceACyrus is a Charles Manson-like guru with a band of drugged-out, bloodthirsty followers who pursue the satanic "Left-Handed Path." This gives Teran an excuse to focus on graphic violence, depraved sex, and gross obscenities, demonstrating his "toughness." But he often pushes a metaphor too hard (describing Bob's truck as a "tin-sided garden of agony cruising in second gear") and sounds ridiculous instead of hard-bitten. At once silly and distasteful; not recommended.ARebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A small-town cop teams up with a former member of a southern California Satan-worshiping cult who helps him take back his kidnaped daughter. Quietly upright police officer Bob Hightower is shocked to his boots when he makes a friendly Christmas-morning visit to the desert home of his ex-wife and her husband. Not only have both been murdered, but the family dogs are stuffed head-first into the toilet; their horse has been mutilated; and Hightower's 14-year-old daughter Gabi is missing. We're told that Bobs superior, the sleazy Captain John Lee Bacon, knows not only why the killings occurred, but also enjoys a special relationship with sadistic monster Cyrus, the Manson-like leader of half a dozen tattooed, pierced, and drug-crazed psychopaths who call themselves the Cult of the Left-Handed Path. Bacon discourages Hightower from running down leadsand Hightower persists, digging up Case Hardin, a former Left-Hander trying to kick her heroin habit in an East L.A. shelter for abused women. Hardin, like just about everyone else in this overblown blood-splatterer, clogs her crude soliloquies about evil and social complacency with obscenities and rock-n-roll lyrics. Still, she eventually helps Hightower to find Cyrus. Along the way, Hightower, a semi-devout Christian, has to pass some pretty gruesome rites of passage, get himself tattooed, and cultivate his bloodlusta sight savored by motor-mouth Cyrus. He finally discovers that Cyrus supplies drugs, sex, and the occasional murder-for-hire to Bacon and others. Absconding with funds from a brutal robbery, Hightower and Case offer to swap swag for Gabi, inciting a flame-lit shoot-out. Ludicrously bad prose (a salt flat is ``laid barren as if it were the hub of a nuclear holocaust or that Devonian moment when the earth was catapulted out of mystery and all was flung aside''). And as for the plotting . . . when it isn't awful bloody, its bloody awful. (First printing of 75,000) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.