The Hanged Men

THE HANGED MEN
by
Edwin Corley (as David Harper)

Dodd, Mead & Company – New York – 1976 Hardcover
Hamish Hamilton – London – 1977 Hardcover
Jove Publishing, Inc. – New York – 1977 Paperback
 
The hanged men dangled in ripe clusters from the bare branches of the autumn trees.  They were Halloween dummies made of old clothes stuffed with straw that kids hung along the mountain roads. Warren Stone counted nine of the swaying figures within two hundred yards of the jeep, including the one his friend and host Sam Keith had just used for target practice. But that hanged man wasn’t stuffed with straw. It was bleeding. And there were two more dangling corpses that had also been alive when they were strung up to strangle to death.
 
Warren, like Sam, had left the CIA under a cloud. Now he cleaned up towns in trouble, an illegal, dangerous business that paid well. He had come to the Adirondacks for a vacation, to hunt deer, not men, but the tide of violence sweeping over the countryside changed that. His life was threatened and he had to find out why. The first murders, he suspected, were the work of the Syndicate; the victims were outsiders with long police records, but there was suddenly a killing madness that couldn’t be blamed on organized crime.
 
Here is a gripping, strongly motivated story of death and retribution, of people who are caught in the traps they built themselves.