Traps: A Novel of the FBI

Justice has become a distant ideal for disenchanted FBI agent Jack Kincade. Once a bright light of the Bureau, he lives in a seedy motel with his loyal Border collie, his largely off-duty hours dominated by rotgut vodka spiked with hot sauce and an unusual sideline: robbing banks. Then he gets a call about a cold case that has just come back to haunt the Bureau in the worst possible way. FBI veteran Paul Lindsay's fifth FBI thriller, "Traps," portrays an agency wracked by apathy and infighting. But attention is soon paid to a three-year-old unsolved kidnapping when the victim's father places an unmovable eight-hundred-pound bomb under the Cook County Jail and its fifteen thousand inmates and demands that his daughter be found. And the brand-new agent in charge learns that Kincade, of all his agents, is his best bet to solve the case. Kincade is soon roused out of his motel room by Ben Alton, a black agent who has lost a leg to cancer and just returned to duty to be relegated to coordinating the unsolved bank larcenies Kincade's been so busy committing. With so much to lose, Kincade joins Alton, and they surprise themselves when, within a few short hours, they solve the kidnapping. But Alton is taunted by unanswered questions and nags Kincade to stay with the case. As the red herrings fall away, this unlikely team faces a pathological adversary with a vengeance so self-serving he threatens the lives and families of the agents themselves.