Publisher's Synopsis
New York Times bestselling author Carsten Stroud writes with a brutal intensity that mesmerizes readers as it brings them onto the front lines of high-stakes police work. Now Stroud has written his most gripping novel to date, a high-voltage tale of betrayal, revenge, and redemption — deeply rooted in the violent underworld of East Coast crime.
Jack Vermillion is an ex-Marine who came back from Vietnam and turned a two-truck shipping outfit into a multimillion-dollar empire. His work is his life. His only grief, a son, Danny, who ran off the rails years back and is now serving a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. A little downtime in Lompoc cooling his heels might do him some good.
But a desperate late-night phone call from Danny, in the prison clinic after a suicide attempt, forces Jack to go looking for a federal deal to save him. So when Jack is approached by a retired U.S. Army colonel named Earl V. Pike to ship his private gun collection — very simple, very illegal — Jack makes the fateful decision to flip one illegal gunrunner for one slightly imperfect kid, and turns Pike in to the ATF.
At the same time, Casey Spandau, a female cop working Sex Crimes at the Two Five in Harlem, finally snaps — and decks a sleazy public defender who richly deserves it. After she's bounced straight into an NYPD—state police task force, Casey's future looks like a self-inflicted tour in cop hell.
Then she takes a call from a state cop searching for a blue Mercedes involved in a savage double homicide. The suspect? Earl V. Pike, U.S. Army, Ret.
What had appeared to be two separate cases are now on a deadly collision course to disaster. For almost as soon as Spandau starts her investigation into the double homicide, her unit slams straight into an ATF sting, and an explosive blue-on-blue firefight erupts with fatal results. Five officers down.
Jack Vermillion finds himself on his way to prison — his company assets seized, his whole world shattered. But Jack isn't going down without a fight. He has only one way to prove his innocence, and it won't be pretty. And if anyone tries to get in his way? Well, there isn't a law enforcement agency in the world that can stop Jack Vermillion now.
A heart-stopping, explosively paced novel of suspense, Black Water Transit is a tough and gritty take on what it means to be trapped on the wrong side of the law — and what can happen when a pretty good guy takes on the really bad ones.
