When small town Motel owner Joe Hooper meets the suspicious couple Karl and Paula Sheldon one evening little does he know how crazy his world is going to become. Stuck running a dead end business Hooper has been waiting for a lucky break to come his way but will a surefire robbery plan really work out? As he sinks deeper into trouble becoming mixed up in a love triangle and murder, things really start to go sour. As the net closes in on Hooper and the Sheldon’s the pages begin to crackle with desperation and bleakness. Clifton Adams was the author of many great Western novels but here shows an amazing skill for taking a standard crime plot and investing just enough tension, greed and lust to create a simmering fireball of noir. For any Jim Thompson fans I would recommend this truly stunning novel.