Hunter's Trap

In Hunter's Trap, Smith's fifth novel, he creates a brooding tale of psychological suspense set on the film noir landscape of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. On the night of the vernal equniox 1930, Wilbur Smythe (a.k.a. Will Hunter) embarks on a plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa's oil money. A twentieth-century "western" blended with elements of Greek tragedy, Hunter's Trap explores the textures of place and time, collision of cultures, and the thin margin between good and evil in members of the human family. Hunter's Trap is a literary page turner that repays its readers from the first page to the last.

C. W. Smith is the author of the novels Thin Men of Haddam, Country Music, The Vestal Virgin Room, and Buffalo Nickel as well as a collection of short stories--Letters from the Horse Latitudes--and the memoir, Uncle Dad. He is professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.