The Texas Twist

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Authors: John Vorhaus

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BOOK: The Texas Twist
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Praise for
The Texas Twist

“Superbly splendilicious! No living author reinvents the English language with such conniving wit as John Vorhaus. It's time to put everything else on hold—the new Radar Hoverlander novel has arrived.”

—Stephen Jay Schwartz
L.A. Times
bestselling author of
Boulevard
and
Beat

 

Praise for the Radar Hoverlander Novels

“Grand entertainment … No caper-novel fan should miss this one.”

—
Booklist

“Pleasantly preposterous…what Radar (and Vorhaus) understand is that every emotional attachment can be exploited for the sake of a scam … A lighthearted caper with psychological insight.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“I loved this comic caper with its twisty pretzel plot, clever invented language, and an attitude that's Carl Hiaasen channeling Dane Cook.”

—
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Vorhaus keeps things moving briskly, and Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen fans should be pleased.”

—
Publishers Weekly

Also by John Vorhaus

N
ONFICTION

The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not

Creativity Rules! A Writer's Workbook

The Pro Poker Playbook

Killer Poker: Strategy and Tactics for Winning Poker Play

Killer Poker Online

The Killer Poker Hold'em Handbook

Poker Night

The Strip Poker Kit

Killer Poker Online/2

Killer Poker No Limit!

Killer Poker Shorthanded
(with Tony Guerrera)

Decide to Play Great Poker
(with Annie Duke)

Decide to Play Drunk Poker

The Little Book of Sitcom

How to Write Good

 

F
ICTION

Under the Gun

The California Roll

The Albuquerque Turkey

World Series of Murder

Lucy in the Sky

     
The

Texas

       
Twist

A Radar Hoverlander Novel

by John Vorhaus

Copyright © 2013 by John Vorhaus

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress

For reference only:

Vorhaus, John, 1955–

The Texas twist / John Vorhaus

ISBN 978-1-938849-08-4

1. Novelists—Fiction. 2. Crime—Fiction. 3. Texas—Fiction

I. Title

Published by
Prospect Park Books
www.prospectparkbooks.com
Published by
Prospect Park Books
www.prospectparkbooks.com

Distributed by

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution

www.cbsd.com

Design by Amy Inouye/Future Studio

Table of Contents

1.
    
Olivier de Havilland

2.
    
The Zizzles

3.
    
Magic Bullet

4.
    
Mirplovian Logic

5.
    
We Smell a Rat

6.
    
You'd Think It's a Scram

7.
    
His Pollyanna Docket

8.
    
The Gun Smoketh

9.
    
True Believer

10.
  
Sweetheart Scam

11.
  
Cortisol Surge

12.
  
Backstory Wink

13.
  
The Texas Twist

14.
  
The Visine Gag

15.
  
On Its Way to Pluto

16.
  
Five Oh Something Something

17.
  
Leave Wellinov Alone

18.
  
A Captain Kirk Kiss

19.
  
The Leveling Game

20.
  
Collateral Glass

21.
  
Savransky Cut

22.
  
The Big Misinformation

23.
  
Kxx

24.
  
We Play with Pain

25.
  
Fools in Motley

26.
  
Grifter Fill

27.
  
The Walkaway

28.
  
The Book of Mirplo

29.
  
Radar Fucking Hoverlander

30.
  
Curiosity

Olivier de Havilland

A
cold wind fell across the face of the west; a scratchy wet towel of a wind that poured down the front range of the Rockies, gathered speed across the prairie, and blasted into Manhattan, Kansas, slamming it sidewise across the north-south artery of Seth Child Road. Rain mixed with sleet rattled the January skeletons of the poplars dotting Kansas State University and thrummed against the casement window of a basement space in a weathered red brick building on the ragged eastern fringe of campus. Inside the lab, a goggle-eyed man in a lab coat with a slight hitch in his giddyup moved frantically—corybantically—from his computer keyboard to his laser array, cold storage units, and test bench equipment. The scientist (well, he looked like a scientist) paused to glance at his watch. He peered out the window, then back at his watch. He looked nervous. He looked nervous even though no one was looking. That's how good he was, how deep he got into his thing.

He glanced once more at his watch.

They were late.

Back on Seth Child, a boxy black pickup truck roared north. It was a new Song Staccato that, as the driver described it, “handled like an auditorium.” He drove aggressively, power-merging with nary a thought to potential collisions and hitting hit holes in the traffic flow like a running back running scared. At Dickens Avenue he slewed savagely into the right-turn lane, fishtailed in the wet, hopped a chunk of corner curb, jammed onto Dickens, and barreled toward campus. A woman in the back seat moaned softly, fighting down her gorge. She caught the driver glancing at her in the rearview mirror. He may have seen her distress, but his eyes showed no mercy and he continued to drive as though hounds of hell had caught the scent of Pup-Peroni in his pants.
Damn it, Mirplo,
she thought,
learn to freaking drive.
Then she reminded herself that he wasn't Vic Mirplo just now. He was Nick Eintritt, private-equity consultant and angel investor.

And maniac driver.

Why couldn't he leave that out of his docket?
wondered Allie Quinn, using common grifter slang for the package of name, personality, backstory, attributes, business cards, websites, phantom friends, bogus bona fides, and ad hoc bafflegab that comprised a con artist's adopted identity. (Allie's own current docket identified her conclusively—albeit fully fictively—as Fabrice Traynor, BSc, MBA, PhD, notionally in from Princeton, and here to lend her expertise to the task of vetting the invention they were about to see.) According to Nick, Nick was in business development, specializing
in alternative-energy investments. Mostly ag-based, of course—biofuel—here in the nation's breadbasket, but every now and then something special came along.

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