Dead Men's Dust [Hardcover]

Matt Hilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 19, 2009

The electrifying debut of ex-military officer and all-around tough guy Joe Hunter, who is on the trail of his missing and estranged brother . . . and the madman who may have taken him

Joe Hunter solves problems. Or, as he likes to put it, he's "the weapon sent in when all the planning is done and all that's left is the ass kicking." And as a former military operative and ex-CIA agent, he's good at what he does. But when he's told that his brother—with whom he hasn't been on the best of terms—has disappeared, he learns that everything he's faced before is child's play compared to what's coming.

Tubal Cain is a killer—smart, stealthy, and arrogant—but he's also sentimental. His most precious possession is the set of knives he uses, and when one of them (his favorite Bowie) is stolen along a deserted stretch of highway, Cain will stop at nothing to get it back.

Unfortunately for Hunter, the thief is his brother, a man who has been on the run from his own mis-takes but is now in the crosshairs of a seriously deranged man. To find his brother, Hunter must find Cain, and the chase takes all three men on a hair-raising journey across the country to a barren spot in the American Southwest, where bones have become nothing more than dead men's dust.

With its cinematic pacing, nonstop thrills, and strong, charismatic hero, Dead Men's Dust introduces Matt Hilton as a powerful and irresistible new voice in thriller fiction.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hilton's energetic but disjointed debut introduces British ex-soldier Joe Hunter, who after 14 years in counterterrorism now spends his time protecting those who need his help, as part hired muscle and part vigilante. Joe reluctantly agrees to track down his wayward half-brother, John Telfer, after his sister-in-law explains that her husband skipped out on the family and headed for America. As Joe and his friend Jared Rink Rington follow John's trail from Arkansas to the Mojave Desert, they come to realize that John's troubles run deeper than just unpaid debts. Interspersed are the musings of Tubal Cain, a man who claims to be the most prolific undetected serial murderer in America. When Cain's path overlaps with John's, it's up to Joe to bring his brother home alive and put a stop to Cain's spree. Hilton has an eye for action and gore, but can't quite wrangle his unwieldy plot. Hopefully, some of the many unanswered questions left at the end will be answered in the sequel. (June)
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From Booklist

The first novel in a series sometimes gets off to a shaky start before finding its stride. That’s the case with Dead Men’s Dust, which introduces Joe Hunter, retired special-ops hunter of terrorists turned knight errant. In his debut, Joe travels from England to the U.S. to track down his ne’er-do-well half-brother, John, who is on the run from gangsters. The trail leads to Southern California, but Joe finds that John is also somehow connected to a serial killer. Of course, mayhem ensues. The story is clunky and the dialogue often leaden until John and Tubal Cain, the serial killer, take the stage. Cain is a boyishly handsome, often charming, over-the-top sociopath driven to surpass Ted Bundy as America’s most notorious, and his verbal sparring with John is slickly done and even funny. But Cain is also scary in a Hannibal Lecter way, and even Joe Hunter may have met his match. As Hilton and Hunter hit their stride, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher could have some worthy competition. --Thomas Gaughan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (May 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061717142
• ISBN-13: 978-0061717147
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,055,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hits all the standard buttons, April 24, 2009

By 

Michael McKee "mystic cowboy" (Port Townsend, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dead Men's Dust (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This novel hits all the tough guy novel buttons. Ex special services military, check. Combat expert, check. Tough guy name, Hunter, check. Sidekick, check. Evil nemesis, check. Works mostly outside the law, check. Heart of gold under a jaded exterior, check.

The plot moves quickly. The bad guy is truly evil. There's plenty of action. And there's promise of more to come.

I've been a fan of this category of fiction since I first read the Travis McGee novels. For the category this is not a bad first novel. I think there is enough promise here to prompt me to read the next in the series. As another reviewer said, Hunter is no Jack Reacher, nor Travis McGee, nor Spencer. Hopefully Matt Hilton will grow as a writer and Hunter as a character. There's enough here to give me cause to look forward.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble." Ben Franklin, August 9, 2010

By 

michael a. draper (Guilford, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Dead Men's Dust (Mass Market Paperback)

Joe Hunter is a problem solver. As the story opens, he lands in Florida to help is sister-in-law, Jennifer, who is being threatened by a criminal nicknamed "Shank." Who is attempting to intimidate Jenn because of debts her former husband, John, didn't pay.

Joe removes the threat and Jenn asks him to find his half brother, John. John left Jenn for a woman named Louise Blake. Although Jenn doesn't love her former husband, she doesn't want harm to come to him, since he is the father of her children and the children would suffer. She tells Joe that she believes John is in grave danger.

John had grown dependent on his brother, Joe, to repay many of his gambling debts and when Joe attempted to get him to change his ways, the half brothers became estranged.

In the Southwest, a cold-blooded, thrill killer is active. Tubal Cain enjoys killing and then cutting off his victim's thumbs. One day, while on the road, he stops where a car has broken down and is robbed of his prized possessions, his knives. Unfortunately, the robber is John. Cain is insensed and wants to find the person who got the better of him and make him pay.

The story describes what Cain and John are doing and Joe's search for his half-brother. It's the heroic man against the killer and John is the wild card in the chase.

If the object of a book is to entertain, the author did his job. He also does nicely in setting the scene and permits the reader to get a good vivid picture of the action. It would be easy to adopt the story for screen.

I enjoyed the novel but think that Joe needs a bit of humility. He has too high a view of himself and not the empathy that Jack Reacher or many other heroic characters possess. I think this can happen and look forward to more of the author's work.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Formulaic and derivative... Nothing to see here, folks; move along., May 4, 2009

By 

Brian Baker (Santa Clarita, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Dead Men's Dust (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I really enjoy the books featuring Mitch Rapp, Jack Reacher, Lucas Davenport, Elvis Cole, Bob Lee Swagger, Harry Bosch, and others in the genre when they're well done. The advertising blurb for this book sounded like it was right up my alley, and I really like discovering new (to me) authors. That's one of the great things about Amazon's Vine program.

Unfortunately, this book fails to hit the mark... badly.

The first and most glaring problem is that in the chapters that focus on protagonist Joe Hunter - told in First Person - we have Hunter himself telling us how tough he is. "I'm the guy they send in when all the other options have failed", or words to that effect. REAL tough guys don't go around bragging about how tough they are. Further, this is the kind of character quality that should be SHOWN and not TOLD.

You don't hear Rapp or Reacher talking about how tough they are. Elvis Cole's self-assessments are always self-deprecating and humorous. Harry Bosch and Bob Lee Swagger dwell on how age is depleting their abilities. We SEE their true qualities through how they handle the situations the stories throw at them. But in this book, the Hunter character never misses an opportunity to brag himself up, seeming to do so about every other chapter or so. Very annoying.

Serial killer Cain (how subtle, I'm sure) - the antagonist of the piece - is a cartoon character; Yosemite Sam without all the red hair, chewing up the scenery at every opportunity without any effort made to give us an insight into the character at all. His function is purely mechanical: a target for Hunter. Period.

The story itself is a plain old shoot-em-up. Gunfight to knife fight to chase to next gunfight to next chase, etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum. There's a little bit of CIA and mobster stuff thrown in to try to leaven the boredom, but it's pretty much irrelevant, as there's no real STORY in this story.

So, why am I giving it a second star?

Beats me. I guess I'm in a good mood. I think there may be some potential here for the future. Maybe.