The steady tick of an aged Regulator wall clock and the squeak of
an overhead fan turning slowly are soft but insistent, counting
down the night, while the high desert thrums like a half-remembered
Victrola song. The sounds are below the consciousness of Winchell
Dear, an old-time gambler, a Texas poker player on the southern
circuit, as he waits for something . . . something vague that his
life of chance tells him is evil and moving his way. He has gassed
and oiled the Cadillac and adjusts the pistol in his right boot,
then plays one of the six fiddle tunes he knows, thinking back to
his good days with Lucinda Miller. Alone, he waits in his remote
ranch house, while, just outside, an acquaintance named Luther
hunts, unblinking and of nervous temperament and moving through
yellow primrose bending in the night wind.
In Diablo Canyon, a distant part of Winchell Dear's ranch, Peter
Long Grass squats by a campfire, contemplating the profile he saw
moving along the ridge of Guapa Mountain an hour ago, thinking
about the gambler's housekeeper, Sonia Dominguez, about the small,
quiet world he has fashioned far from civilization and what
undefined presence might now be threatening it. He gathers his
tools and begins to run across the desert floor.
And boring toward all of them is a cream-colored Lincoln
Continental with two men aboard. Traveling from Los Angeles on a
mission they've been given, they are professionals, cool and
implacable at the start, but becoming steadily more confused by the
strange landscape they are passing through. Forty minutes from
their task, they ready themselves, while a kitchen wall clock ticks
its way through the long night of Winchell Dear.
The Long Night of Winchell Dear finds master storyteller Robert
James Waller at his best as he takes us through the wind and dust
of the high desert mountains, into the shadowy world of high-stakes
poker fought in the back rooms of Amarillo and Little Rock, and
headlong toward the book's stunning finale of chaotic terror, where
an unexpected hero emerges.
"From the Hardcover edition."
General
Imprint: |
Three Rivers Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
June 2007 |
First published: |
June 2007 |
Authors: |
Robert James Waller
|
Dimensions: |
203 x 136 x 10mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - Trade
|
Pages: |
160 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-307-35308-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-307-35308-7 |
Barcode: |
9780307353085 |
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