You Can't Stop Me. Max Allan Collins
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Praise for You Can’t Stop Me
“Max Allan Collins delivers cutting-edge action and suspense!”
—David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Shimmer
“Reality TV turns thriller! A killer yarn from a master of suspense.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Doomsday Key
…and for Max Allan Collins
“Max Allan Collins has an outwardly artless style that conceals a great deal of art.”
—The New York Times
“Max Allan Collins is masterful. His ability to sustain suspense is exceptional.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Max Allan Collins is the closest thing we have to a 21st-century Mickey Spillane.”
—ThisWeek (Ohio)
“No one can thrust through a maze with the intensity and suspense of Max Allan Collins.”
—Clive Cussler
“Max Allan Collins is among the finest crime writers today.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Smooth and imaginative.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Collins’ witty, hard-boiled prose would make Raymond Chandler proud.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A terrific writer!”
—Mickey Spillane
“One of the new masters of the genre.”
—Atlantic Journal-Constitution
“Simply open the book. The pages turn themselves. A fine novel by a fine writer.”
—John Lutz (on Road to Purgatory)
“As cool as an Eskimo Pie on a summer day and as sharp as a Ginsu knife.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (on The First Quarry)
“A compelling talent for flowing narrative and concise, believable dialogue. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal
“Collins skillfully ties up a multitude of branches into the big, bloody bouquet one would expect from the author of The Road to Perdition…. Sharp and satisfying…”
—Publishers Weekly (on Deadly Beloved)
Also by Max Allan Collins
Road to Perdition (graphic novel)
Road to Purgatory
Road to Paradise
CSI series
Quarry in the Middle
The First Quarry
The Last Quarry
The Goliath Bone (with Mickey Spillane)
The Big Bang (with Mickey Spillane)
The History of Mystery
(with Matthew Clemens & George Hagenauer)
As Barbara Allan (with Barbara Collins)
Antiques Bizarre
Antiques Flee Market
Antiques Maul
Antiques Roadkill
Also by Matthew Clemens
My Lolita Complex (with Max Allan Collins)
Dead Water: The Klindt Affair (with Pat Gipple)
CSI graphic novel series (with Max Allan Collins)
MAX ALLAN COLLINS
and
MATTHEW CLEMENS
YOU CAN’T STOP ME
PINNACLE BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
For Lee Goldberg—
who really knows TV
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
—ALFRED HITCHCOCK
If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
—KURT VONNEGUT
Contents
One: The Crime
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Two: The Team
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Three: The Road
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Four: The Message
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter One
John Christian Harrow had never much cared for the Iowa State Fair.
He was uncomfortable around throngs of people, and the cacophony of chatter, ballyhoo, and music always put a crease between his eyebrows. The skyline of vast barns, art-deco pavilions, Ferris wheels, and even a mammoth slide held no magic for him; overhead open-air cars of airsick passengers swaying like fruit about to ripen and fall made him question the general sanity of the human race.
The smells, whether the stench of farm animals or the lure of frying batter, did not appeal—they made him neither want to milk a cow nor risk his arteries on a funnel cake. And now and then an unmistakable