{"product_id":"the-drifter-isbn-9780425283257","title":"The Drifter","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first explosive thriller featuring Peter Ash, a veteran who finds that the demons of war aren’t easily left behind...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Lots of characters get compared to my own Jack Reacher, but Petrie’s Peter Ash is the real deal.”—Lee Child\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter Ash came home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with only one souvenir: what he calls his “white static,” the buzzing claustrophobia due to post-traumatic stress that has driven him to spend a year roaming in nature, sleeping under the stars. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut when a friend from the Marines commits suicide, Ash returns to civilization to help the man’s widow with some home repairs. Under her dilapidated porch, he finds more than he bargained for: the largest, ugliest, meanest dog he’s ever encountered...and a Samsonite suitcase stuffed with cash and explosives. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs Ash begins to investigate this unexpected discovery, he finds himself at the center of a plot that is far larger than he could have imagined...and it may lead straight back to the world he thought he’d left for good.\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “As I was reading Petrie’s exceptional debut,\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eO’Brien’s [\u003ci\u003eThe Things They Carried\u003c\/i\u003e] buzzed at the edges of my consciousness, casting the newer book as a thematic sequel to O’Brien’s classic...\u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e may be about a different war, but it’s about the same hell, and in this book it’s about the things a vet carries home with him....[The] lean prose, gritty descriptions, and raw psychological depth give the novel a feel that reminded me of early Dennis Lehane.”—\u003ci\u003eMilwaukee Journal-Sentinel\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A gripping, beautifully written novel.”—The Huffington Post\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e is a stunning debut. Peter Ash is one of the most complex characters I've come across in a long time. The pace is like a sniper round, extraordinarily fast and precisely calibrated. The prose is fluid, original and frequently brilliant, the story heart-wrenching and uplifting at the same time. There is grit in this tale that will stay with you for a long time. Perhaps forever. I eagerly await Nick Petrie's next creation.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e-bestselling author David Baldacci\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A powerful, empathetic, and entertaining tale about the plight many combat veterans face when they come home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Top-notch storytelling.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “[Ash’s] sharply intelligent, witty voice strikes the right tone for an honest exploration of the challenges returning veterans face, and while this wandering veteran will remind some of Jack Reacher, Peter’s struggle to overcome PTSD sets him apart. An absorbing thriller debut with heart.”—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Petrie’s expertly paced plot sets a colorful array of characters on a collision course. Readers will look forward to seeing more of the resourceful Ash.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Petrie's impressive debut thriller is fine tuned, the action gripping, and through Ash offers a well-drawn portrait of a vet who can't escape his combat experience. Like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Ash's philosophy of detection is to poke a stick into something and see what happens. His discoveries will keep the reader on edge and whet the appetite for more from this author.”—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Nick Petrie’s debut novel follows the compelling story of one former Marine’s struggle to reacclimate himself to civilian life while honoring his commitment to a fallen soldier. That alone is reason to keep reading, but Petrie amps up the stakes in surprising fashion, creating a story that is moving, thrilling and satisfying on every level....[An] intimate story of personal discovery as well as an obsessive pageturner of a book.”—BookPage \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Gritty and engaging, this debut novel will capture readers from the first word. Edge-of-your-seat action keeps the plot racing to a stunning conclusion....This is a fantastic first novel and a captivating thriller.”—\u003ci\u003eRT Book Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e (4 ½ stars)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “With \u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e, Nick Petrie has written just about the perfect thriller. I haven't read such a well-crafted and gripping story in a month of Sundays. If this is Petrie's first novel, watch out for the second one. But why wait? This one's here now, and it's a home run.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e-bestselling author John Lescroart \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A tangled tale of intrigue, action, and adventure with a battle-scarred hero who definitely rises to the challenge. The clever plot is firmly conceived and crisp writing makes this a terrific story, told terrifically.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e-bestselling author Steve Berry\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Nick Petrie's \u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e has one of the most thrilling openings I've ever read, involving a dank crawlspace, the nastiest, smelliest dog in creation, and a former Marine lieutenant still suffering from the trauma of his war. It can't get better than this, I figured, but it does. Petrie's novel keeps accelerating even as it burrows ever deeper into the dark heart of the new American dream.  It is a sterling debut.  And yes, the dog is a star.”—\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e-bestselling authorWilliam Lashner \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A timely, intelligent thriller, as much an indictment as a gripping page-turner. Nick Petrie’s debut simmers and seethes until it finally boils over in a masterfully-drawn final showdown. Teeming with grit and desperation and told in spare, vivid prose, this is not a debut you’ll want to miss.”—Owen Laukkanen, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Stolen Ones\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eNicholas Petrie\u003c\/b\u003e received his MFA in fiction from the University of Washington, won a Hopwood Award for short fiction while an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and his story “At the Laundromat” won the 2006 Short Story Contest in the \u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Review\u003c\/i\u003e, a national literary journal. A husband and father, he runs a home-inspection business in Milwaukee. \u003ci\u003eThe Drifter\u003c\/i\u003e is his first novel.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e There was a pit bull under the front porch and it didn’t want to come out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Young Charlie Johnson said, “That dang dog’s been there for weeks, sir. It already ate up all the cats and dogs around here. I can’t even let my dang little brother out the front door no more.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The hundred-year-old house sat on a narrow lot on the edge of a battered Milwaukee neighborhood that, like the house, had seen better days. It was early November, not warm, not even by Wisconsin standards. The leaves had already fallen from the skeletal trees that towered overhead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the sun was out, which counted for something. And the sky was a high, pale morning blue. Not a morning for static. Not at all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter Ash said, “Just how big is this dog?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Charlie shook his head. “Never seen it up close, sir, and never in daylight. But it’s awfully dang big, I can tell you that.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Didn’t you call animal control?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Oh, my mama called,” said Charlie. “Two men came, took one look under there, got right back in their truck and drove away.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Charlie wore a school uniform, a light-blue permanent-press dress shirt, dark-blue polyester dress pants, and giant polished black shoes on his oversized feet. He was the kind of skinny, big-eared, twelve-year-old kid who could eat six meals a day and still be hungry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But his eyes were older than his years. They didn’t miss a thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He was watching Peter Ash now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter sat on the closed lid of a wooden toolbox, his wide, knuckly hands on the work-worn knees of his carpenter’s jeans, peering through the narrow access hatch cut into the rotted pine slats enclosing the space under the porch. He had to admit the dog sounded big. He could hear it growling back there in the darkness. Like a tank engine on idle, only louder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He had a .45 under the seat of his pickup, but he didn’t want to use it. It wasn’t the dog’s fault, not really. It was hungry and scared and alone, and all it had was its teeth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e On the other hand, Peter had told Charlie’s mother, Dinah, that he would fix the rotting supports beneath her ancient porch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e She hadn’t mentioned the dog.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter really couldn’t blame her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Her husband had killed himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And it was Peter’s fault.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e**\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter was lean and rangy, muscle and bone, nothing extra. His long face was angular, the tips of his ears slightly pointed, his dark hair the unruly shag of a buzz cut grown wild. He had the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Some part of him was always in motion—even now, sitting on that toolbox, peering under that porch, his knee bobbed in time to some interior metronome that never ceased.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He’d fought two wars over eight years, with more deployments than he cared to remember. The tip of the spear. He’d be thirty-one in January.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As he bent to look through the narrow access hatch under the porch, he could feel the white static fizz and pop at the base of his skull. That was his name for the fine-grained sensation he lived with now, the white static. A vague crackling unease, a dissonant noise at the edge of hearing. It wasn’t quite uncomfortable, not yet. The static was just reminding him that it didn’t want him to go inside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter knew it would get worse before he was done.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e So he might as well get to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The space under the porch was about three feet high. Maybe twelve feet wide and twelve deep, with a dirt floor. About the size of four freshly dug graves, laid sideways. The smell was rank, worse than a sergeant’s feet after two months in a combat outpost. But not as bad as a two-week-old corpse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Light trickled in through the slatted sides of the porch, but shadows shrouded the far corner, some kind of cast-off crap back there. And that growl he could just about feel through the soles of his boots.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It would be good to do this without being chewed on too much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He went out to his truck and found a cordless trouble light, some good rope, and a length of old handrail. White oak, an inch and three-quarters thick, maybe eighteen inches long. Nice and solid in the hand. Which was a help when you were contemplating something spectacularly stupid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Serenaded by the growls from the crawl space, he sat down on the toolbox and took out his knife while young Charlie Johnson watched.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Not that Peter wanted an audience. This certainly could get ugly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Don’t you have someplace to go, Charlie? School or something?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Charlie glanced at a cheap black digital watch strapped to his skinny wrist. “No, sir,” he said. “Not yet I don’t.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter just shook his head. He didn’t like it, but he understood. He figured he wasn’t that far from twelve years old himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He cut three short lengths from his rope and left the remainder long, ten or twelve feet. Tied one end of a short piece of rope tight to each end of the oak rail. Looped the last short rope and the remainder through his belt a single time, so he could get at it quickly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Then he looked up at Charlie again. “You better get out of here, kid. If this goes bad, you don’t want to be around.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Charlie said, “I’m not a dang kid. Sir. I’m the man of the family.” He reached inside the door, brought out an aluminum baseball bat, and demonstrated his swing. “That’s my dang porch. My little brother, too. I ain’t going nowhere.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Charlie’s dad always had the same look behind the Humvee’s .50 turret gun. Eyes wide open and ready for trouble. Daring any motherfucker to pop up with an RPG or Kalashnikov or whatever. But when his wife, Dinah, sent cookies, Big Jimmy Johnson—known inevitably to the platoon’s jokers as Big Johnson, or just plain Big—was always the last to eat one.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter missed him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He missed them all. The dead and the living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He said, “Okay, Charlie. I can respect that.” He put his eyes on the boy and held them there. “But if that dog gets loose you get your butt in that house, you hear me? And if you hit me with that bat I’m going to be seriously pissed.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Yessir.” Charlie nodded. “Can’t promise anything, sir. But I’ll do my best.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Peter smiled to himself. At least the kid was honest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e After that there was nothing more to do but lean back and kick out the slats on one side of the porch, letting in more daylight. The space was still small. The tank engine in the shadows got louder. But no sign of the dog. Must be lurking in that trash pile in the far corner.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Not that it mattered. He wasn’t turning away from the challenge. He was just planning how to succeed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The familiar taste filled his mouth, a coppery flavor, like blood. He felt the adrenaline lift and carry him forward. It was similar to the static, rising. The body’s preparation for fight or flight. It was useful.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e He peered under the porch, and the static rose higher still. The static didn’t care about the snarling dog. It cared about the enclosure. It jangled his nerves, raced his heart, tightened his chest, and generally clamored for his attention. It wanted him to stay outside in the open air, in the daylight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Breathing deeply, Peter took the piece of oak and banged it on the wood frame of the porch. It rang like a primitive musical instrument.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Despite everything, he was smiling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Hey, dog,” he called into the darkness. “Watch your ass, I’m coming in!”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e And in he went, headfirst on his elbows and knees, the stick in one hand and the trouble light in the other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What, you want to live forever?","brand":"G.P. Putnam's Sons","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302565662949,"sku":"NP9780425283257","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780425283257.jpg?v=1767739085","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-drifter-isbn-9780425283257","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}