William Florence is the author of the Max Blake Westerns and the Max Blake Mysteries series of novels. He is a former newspaper reporter and editor who teaches journalism at a college in Salem, Oregon. He worked at newspapers in Michigan, Washington, D.C., South Dakota, Indiana, and Oregon for 25 years before heading the Chemeketa Community College journalism department in 1993. He has written news articles, feature stories, columns, editorials, and has been published widely in newspapers and on wire services through the country. He has won writing awards in four states. His work has been published nationally in such widely read industry magazines as The Bulletin for the American Society of Newspaper Editors and APME News for the Associated Press Managing Editors group, and for noted travel publications such as Arizona Highways and Michigan Living. In addition to living in the West, Mr. Florence has traveled extensively throughout the Western states and has an excellent feel for the land and its inhabitants. He studies Western lore, is knowledgeable about the customs and history of the Old West, and is especially well-versed in the weapons that were used during this colorful period. In his spare time, he writes the Max Blake: Federal Marshal Westerns series and the Max Blake Mystery series. Mr. Florence attended colleges in Michigan and Ireland. He is a voracious reader and a movie buff. He is married with two adult children.

Texte du rabat

A mild-mannered college professor becomes an unlikely candidate to hunt down the killer of the town's richest man and his movie star paramour. But as things progress, it quickly becomes apparent that every attractive woman on the West Coast has become a maniac's idea of the most dangerous game. Called in because of a chance encounter years before, Max Blake, a former newspaper reporter-turned-professor and part-time private detective, is forced to form unusual and sometimes dodgy alliances as he investigates the vicious killings with the city's police chief. The alliance is even more complicated because of a past history between Max and the chief, and the fact that the leading candidates for the murders are members of the city's police force. The trail winds through the incredible mansion called Raptor's Ridge, through the streets and alleyways of Oregon's state capitol, and it eventually spills into the state's beautiful but deadly High Desert near the town of John Day. When the killer is eventually cornered and violence explodes in unexpected ways, Max must use all of his wits and daring, plus a little bit of luck, to remain alive during a deadly night of terror ... and eventual reckoning. Fans of the author's Max Blake Westerns series will rejoice in discovering this new and thoroughly modern Max, the great-great grandson and namesake of the legendary federal marshal that forms the basis of five novels from the same author.