Dust in the Heart, Paperback

There's a killer stalking children in a small, North Carolina town...and the only one who can stop him is the local Sheriff, a man crippled physically and emotionally by a war that he's still fighting within himself. The haunting, powerful new thriller by Ralph Dennis, author of the legendary Hardman series of crime novels

Wilton Drake's hip was shattered by a sniper's bullet in Lebanon...and his heart was ripped apart by the wife who left him as lay in a military hospital. Now, after fiteen years in the Navy, he's returned to Edgefield, North Carolina a broken man, looking for a way to hold himself together. He finds it in a bottle...and behind a badge as Webster County's newly elected Sheriff...but his forbidden attraction to a mysterious stripper and his harrowing investigation into a horrific string of child murders might destroy what's left of him, body and soul.

"Ralph Dennis has mastered the genre and supplied top entertainment." New York Times

"His prose is muscular, swift and highly readable. " Joe R. Lansdale, author of the Hap & Leonard novels, the basis for the hit TV series.

"Exceptional characterization, strong and vigorous prose, and a glimpse into a place and time that has long since disappeared." Mystery Scene Magazine"An underappreciated master." Robert J. Randisi, founder of the Private Eye Writers of America.

"Straight-up, hardboiled crime fiction, written in a tight, evocative voice with a wicked, dark sense of humor." Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Fiction and Lost Hills.