New Releases by Jack Olsen

Missing Persons is a novel of contemporary suspense and horror, combining the shock and tension with gritty realism. A story of terror, loss and love that unlocks the nightmares lurking behind the facades of ordinary lives. Could it happen to you? Severn Gamble’s wife walks into the Justice Building of a major Northwestern city and never comes out. (“Margot!”) No one has seen her. (“Margot!”) She has disappeared. (“Margot!”) And the nightmare begins. Gamble starts to hunt for her, joined by two police officers, Johnny Boon, case-hardened, cynical, and with a wife who’s just walked out on him; and Tally Wickham, young, pretty, smartass, and as compatible with Boon as oil and water. Together and separately, the three of them undertake a search for Margot Gamble, a search that soon becomes obsessional, as others begin disappearing too, beginning with a child.… Never faltering, thick with vivid characterization and building to one of the most terrifying climaxes in years.

Have You Seen My Son? is Jack Olsen’s powerful novel of child-snatching and a mother''s obsessed hunt for her five-year-old son – “a gripping, intensely moving novel,” writes Robert Daley, author of Prince of the City and Year of the Dragon. “The ending left me with tears in my eyes. There is no love like mother love, is there?” And no greater test of it than what Lael Pritcher is about to endure. One cool April day, Mike Pritcher visits the home of his estranged wife, Lael, and takes their son, Ace, for an overnight outing. “She pushed her son’s black-rimmed glasses up the slope of his thin nose. He jerked away like a puppy slipping its leash. A giggle, a crunch of gravel, a single wave of a grimy hand, and her only child was gone.” Gone – child-snatched, though Lael won''t realize that right away, and won''t understand what it means even when the police tell her it''s a “domestic matter.” “You got the right to snatch him back,” her lawyer explains. “That’s about it.” So that’s what she sets out to do, in one of the most suspenseful, emotion-wrenching novels in recent years. Have You Seen My Son? is Lael Pritcher’s story, as she searches for her son throughout the Northwest, Canada and finally Mexico; an odyssey of near-misses and sudden reversals, searing loneliness and unshakable love, as Lael reaches deep inside herself for a resourcefulness and strength she never knew existed. Combining intimate drama with powerful suspense, this is a story with which every woman – and every man – will identify.

In the heart of the Swiss Alps stand the three majestic peaks of the Bernese Oberland, Europe''s most famous mountain range. The highest, at 13,638 feet, is the Jungfrau. Next is the Mönch, at 13,465 feet. But it is the smallest, the Eiger, rising 13,038 feet above sea level, that is by far the deadliest. Called a "living" mountain for its constantly changing conditions-unpredictable weather, disintegrating limestone surfaces, and continuously falling rock and ice-its mile-high north wall is perhaps the most dangerous climb in the world. And that may be just what beckons elite Alpinists to scale the treacherous peak against the odds. In 1957, nearly forty years before the well-known Mount Everest tragedy, two teams of confident climbers set out to summit the north wall of the Eiger Mountain. Not long into their journey, onlookers could tell that the four men were headed for disaster. Soon rescue teams from all over Europe raced toward the Eiger-yet only one of the four climbers survived to face unfounded international accusations. In a story as fascinating as any novel, Jack Olsen creates a riveting account of daring adventure, heroic rescue, and one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of mountain climbing. KIRKUS REVIEW The forbidden, formidable north wall of the Eiger Mountain in the Bernese Alps, while it was first successfully climbed in 1938, has remained a supreme challenge to the most seasoned climber and in 1957 two teams of two Germans and two Italians again made the attempt with devastating results. while Corti, the only survivor, was perhaps talented- all were seemingly uninformed and ill-prepared, certainly for the wind and weather conditions which were to defeat them and make their rescue so difficult. Corti''s partner, Longhi, was the first to entertain misgivings and was soon worn out, suffering frostbite as well; the Germans lost their food and were sustained chiefly by an innate, irrational mystique. Rescue crews were quickly organized, but only Corti, who ""looked like a live corpse"", was salvaged; his partner had been left lower down- to die, and the bodies of the other two ropemates were only found months later. In the avalanche of blame, resentment (against the guides as well as Corti) to follow, no true judgement could be reached although Olsen, a Sports Illustrated staff writer, does absolve Corti after a final interview... The folly and the fascination of "vertical Russian roulette", the courage compounded with stupidity, the doubts and recriminations which lingered on long after this disastrous ascent, all intensify the drama of this attempt and revive the furor it occasioned at the time. It will keep its readers on the ropes.

The war between society and the antisocial personality has long been a subject of fascination, and few have explored it as thoroughly as award-winning author Jack Olsen. In his national best seller Son: A Psychopath and His Victims, Olsen studied a psychopathic rapist who found the perfect protective coloration in jogging shoes and sweats. In this book, the story of Claude Lafayette Dallas, Jr., Olsen takes on perhaps his most challenging assignment -- explicating the curious relationship between a homicidal young "mountain man" and those who saw in his colorful ways the embodiment of the cowboy mystique of the West. On a snow-blown day, Dallas killed two game wardens who entered his trapping and poaching camp in ldaho''s Owyhee Desert. The cold-bloodedness of Dallas''s crime shocked the West. Stained with his victim''s blood. he confessed to a companion, "This is Murder One for me." Then Claude Dallas vanished into the wild and rugged mountains that had sheltered him for so long. For fifteen long months he was the subject of an international manhunt until the FBI and a drawling country sheriff joined forces to run him to earth in a rain of bullets. Only then did lawmen learn about the network of friends who had helped him elude capture. To some of Dallas''s rustic neighbors the deadly progression from cowboy to poacher to killer seemed justifiable, even admirable. Clanking around the bars and barrancas of the high desert country in his hand-filed spurs and well-oiled guns, Claude Dallas had brought a strange new madness to the mythology of the West, a madness that even a jury of his peers found nostalgically seductive in a sensational trial. Claude Dallas came within a whisker of going free. Only Jack Olsen, through painstaking research into Dallas''s background and exhaustive on-the-scene interviewing, could unravel such a rat''s nest of contradictions and confusions and create so compelling a portrait of the killer whose bloody deeds might have been foreordained from childhood. From Publishers Weekly Claude Dallas Jr. was raised in Upper Michigan and Ohio by a father whose philosophy was "give a boy a gun and you''re makin'' a man." After high school, the young man went to the rugged border area of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada and worked as a cow-puncher and handyman on several ranches. But his dream was evidently to become a 19th centurystyle mountain man and so he turned to poaching, often killing animals even though he had no need for the meat. In 1981, he killed two game wardens in front of a witness. On the run for 15 months, he was eventually captured in a shootout and found guilty of manslaughter in a singularly bizarre trial. From Library Journal ``Give a boy a gun and you''re makin'' a man,'''' Claude Dallas, Sr., is quoted as saying in this book about his son, Claude Jr., a self-made cowboy, trapper, and ``mountain man'''' who was convicted of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of two Idaho game wardens. Claude Jr. was well-liked by many, including a sympathetic jury which rejected possible first or second degree murder verdicts. Was it a case of self-defense or outright murder? Olsen, who last wrote the popular `` Son'''': a psychopath and his victims ( LJ 11/15/83), skillfully presents his viewpoint in a readable tale more reminiscent of Old West traditions than of the 1980s. Recommended.