The Jaguar

For fans of Michael Connelly and CJ Box, the fifth audacious and white-hot novel in the Charlie Hood series from New York Times bestseller and Edgar-award winner T. Jefferson Parker redefines the landscape of the thriller and shatters every expectation you ever had about the good guys and the bad. Now featuring an excerpt from his upcoming novel The Room of White Fire.

When Benjamin Armenta, leader of the powerful Gulf Cartel, kidnaps songwriter Erin McKenna, his demands are as unique as the jungle fortress in which Erin is imprisoned. She’s ordered to compose a narcocorrido, a folk ballad that will romanticize Armenta as one of the greatest desperadoes in Mexican history. Allowed to wander the hallways of the castle with only a guitar and a mysterious old priest to keep her company, Erin must produce the loveliest song these men have ever heard. Or she’ll be skinned alive.

As Erin’s music wafts through the jungle, it serves as a siren call to the two men who love her: lawman Charlie Hood and Erin’s outlaw husband, Bradley Jones. They have the power to rescue her, but their long-simmering rivalry could very well compromise Erin’s deliverance and cause the ending of a life-and-death ballad to be rewritten in blood.