The Grudge

This crime novel from the authors of The Man Who Followed Women features two Los Angeles railroad detectives and explosive suspense. Tommy Collins has escaped from a midwestern prison, using dynamite to blast his way out—and killing a nurse in the process. The explosion was felt over a thousand miles away, where Tommy’s sister lives in fear in Los Angeles. She has squirreled her mother and younger sister away, afraid Tommy will come after them for turning him in to the cops. Aftershocks also shake the LA office of railroad detectives Chuck Reeves and veteran John Farrel when some remote railway yards become the targets of mysterious detonations. Connections are made, and the detectives quickly realize Tommy holds a violent grudge against the railroad for firing him from his job. And with nothing to lose, his rampage is getting worse the closer he gets to his desperate family . . . “Almost unbearable suspense . . . Holds the reader to the last punctuation mark.” —Greensboro News & Record The Grudge, first published in 1963, is a fast-paced murder mystery set in southern California by veteran authors Bert and Dolores Hitchens. From the dustjacket: “Tommy Collins had a corroding, insensate grudge—against his mother and sisters, who had turned him over to the police—against the railroad which had fired him from his job. And now, having killed three people in his explosive escape from State Prison Hospital, he was at large, wreaking vengeance in his characteristically deadly way. It was already too late to save one member of the family, and Special Agent Farrel, of the Los Angeles Railroad Police, had to halt Tommy’s rampage of death and destruction before it claimed another victim ... For Tommy was playing for keeps—with dynamite.”