Description:

Henry Lightstone, the Fish and Wildlife Service's top undercover agent, has been sent with his team on a sting operation to the Pacific Northwest. Posing as corrupt animal smugglers looking to bag some illegal game, they are hoping to bag some illegal gamers. He'll have a lot of obstacles cross his path: a crooked congressman, a ruthless coalition of industrialists, a traitorous Army Ranger hunter-killer team team, and a band of crazy, gun-toting, right-wing woodsmen, to name a few. All in all, though, it's nothing Henry Lightstone can't handle. ** ### From Library Journal Special agent Henry Lightstone of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigates an Oregon-based militia group in Goddard's (Cheater, Forge, 1996) latest. While the militia turns out to be only a group of old coots with more interest in avoiding their bossy wives than in waging war on the government, Lightstone is kept busy with other matters. A sexy witch with a pet panther, a ruthless congressman and his team of killers-for-hire, and a warehouse full of deadly snakes and spiders are just the beginning. Throw in a couple of mythical beasts and a blind soothsayer who rides a moped and you get this amusing, fast-paced thriller replete with bizarre characters and outrageous situations. Recommended for popular fiction collections.?Melissa Kuzma Rockicki, NYPL Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From Kirkus Reviews The usually reliable Goddard (Cheater, 1996, etc.) offers a murky, inane, farcical thriller in which federal agents unwittingly work at cross purposes while trying to bag the vindictive villains who are secretly after them. The US Fish & Wildlife Service dispatches two teams of special agents to Oregon's Rogue Valley on seemingly separate missions. One group, headed by ex-policeman Henry Lightstone, is ordered to set up an unlikely sting operation, while the other is told to trail Regis J. Smallsreed, a corrupt congressman with a passion for hunting endangered waterfowl species--in season or out. The crooked Smallsreed has powerful allies from the military/industrial complex, one of whom has vowed vengeance on Lightstone for the loss of his family (in Wildfire, 1994). In aid of their objective, the bad guys (whose ultimate goal is to keep the biosphere safe for ecologically ruinous overdevelopment) recruit a half dozen former Army Rangers. Using an over-the-hill gang of local militia as dupes, this armed and dangerous crew sets an up-country trap for the two-fisted Lightstone and his wiseacre associates. Before they can get the lawmen in their sights, however, the renegade soldiers need a positive ID, which (owing to a series of absurd misfortunes) they never get. In short order, Lightstone is doing undercover work with a luscious self-styled witch known only as Karla, whose amorous black panther (Sasha) takes to him as well. With help from this odd couple, the backwoods copper is able to infiltrate the mercenaries (who still don't know what he looks like). As a quasi- insider, Lightstone is then able to engineer a two-stage showdown that brings all but one of the culpable to book. An addled, awkwardly plotted narrative that strains for, and fails to achieve, devil-may-care effects. -- *Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.*