Jane Whitefield Series

Jane Whitefield is a Native American guide who leads solitary outcasts through hostile territory to escape the vengeance of their enemies. But the shaded forest paths her Seneca ancestors might have followed on such missions have all been converted to superhighways, and now the safest way stations are crowded urban buildings that offer the camouflage of anonymity. Still, the supply of runaways-and the need for a woman who will take great risks to save them-have never been greater. Jane knows all the tricks; in fact, she has invented several of them herself in the ten years she has been teaching fugitives to live with new identities. Many of her clients have been innocent people whom the institutions of society have been too slow and cumbersome to protect, but an increasing number have been like the gambler Harry Kemple: people who aren't especially admirable but who aren't bad enough to deserve to die prematurely. Jane opens her door to find in her house an uninvited visitor named John Felker, the latest to run to her for sanctuary. Felker is not like the others Jane has helped, and everything about him is disquieting. He doesn't even know whom he is running from-only that whoever is framing him as an embezzler has already circulated an open contract in the prison system for his death. Maybe his problems began years ago, when he was a policeman; a good cop makes an enemy with each arrest. But perhaps he is still a policeman and has invented precisely the right story to entrap Jane. Or perhaps he is something even worse. The unexpected guest draws this exceptional woman into an adventure of mystery, love and sacrifice, betrayal and vengeance, and propels her on a pursuit that takes her from the night streets of Los Angeles and Vancouver to the dark, unexplored regions of her own mind. There is no way for Jane Whitefield to survive this particular vanishing act except to uncover the hidden meanings of violent events that have kept police forces and criminal syndicates equally mystified for years. She must see beyond the cement and steel of the cities and learn to see as her Indian ancestors did. Vanishing Act is Edgar Award winner Thomas Perry at the top of his form, pitting a heroine like no other against a cunning, implacable enemy in a world where mercy and brutality exist in equal measure and the only way to survive is by one's wits.

When eight-year-old Timothy Decker finds his parents brutally murdered, it's clear the Deckers weren't the intended victims: Timothy's own room-ransacked, all traces of his existence expertly obliterated-is the shocking evidence. Timothy's nanny, Mona, is certain about only one thing. Timmy needs to disappear, fast. Only Jane Whitefield, a Native American "guide" who specializes in making victims vanish, can lead him to safety. But diverting Jane's attention is Mary Perkins, a desperate woman with SL fraud in her past. Stalking Mary is a ruthless predator determined to find her-and the fortune she claims she doesn't have. Jane quickly creates a new life for Mary and jumps back on Timmy's case...not knowing that the two are fatefully linked to one calculating killer.

Jane Whitefield is a name to be whispered like a prayer-a shadow woman who rescues the helpless and the hunted when their enemies leave them no place to hide. Now, with the bone-deep cunning of her Native American forebears, she arranges a vanishing act for Pete Hatcher, a Las Vegas gambling executive. It should be a piece of cake, but she doesn't yet know about Earl and Linda-professional destroyers who will cash in if Hatcher dies, killers who love to kill...slowly. From Las Vegas to upstate New York to the Rockies, the race between predator and prey slowly narrows until at last they share an intimacy broken only by death.

Jane Whitefield, legendary half-Indian shadow guide who spirits hunted people away from certain death, has never had a client like Dr. Richard Dahlman. A famous plastic surgeon who has dedicated his life to healing, the good doctor hasn't a clue why stalkers are out for his blood. But he knows Jane Whitefield's name-and that she is his only hope. Once again, Jane performs her magic, leading Dahlman in a nightmare flight across America, only a heartbeat ahead of pursuers whose leader is a dead ringer for Jane: a raven-haired beauty who has stolen her name, reputation, and techniques-not to save lives, but to destroy them.

After a nine-year absence, the fiercely resourceful Native American guide Jane Whitefield is back, in the latest superb thriller by award-winning author Thomas Perry. For more than a decade, Jane pursued her unusual profession: "I'm a guide...I show people how to go from places where somebody is trying to kill them to other places where nobody is." Then she promised her husband she would never work again and settled in to live a happy, quiet life as Jane McKinnon, the wife of a surgeon in Amherst, New York. But when a bomb goes off in the middle of a hospital fundraiser, Jane finds herself face to face with the cause of the explosion: a young pregnant girl who has been tracked across the country by a team of hired hunters.That night, regardless of what she wants or the vow that she's made to her husband, Jane must come back to transform one more victim into a runner. And her quest for safety sets in motion a mission that will be a rescue operation-or a chance for revenge. Runner is Thomas Perry at the top of his form.

Jane Whitefield, the fearless "guide" who helps people in trouble disappear, has just begun her quiet new life as Mrs. Carey McKinnon when she is called upon again to face her toughest opponents yet. Jane must try to save a young girl fleeing a deadly mafioso. The deceptively simple task of hiding the girl propels Jane into the center of horrific events and pairs her with Bernie the Elephant, the Mafia's moneyman. Bernie has a photographic memory, and in order to undo an evil that has been growing for half a century, he and Jane engineer the biggest theft of all time-stealing billions from hidden Mafia accounts-only to face the unprecedented problem of what to do with that much money.

Poison Flower, the seventh novel in Thomas Perry's celebrated Jane Whitefield series, opens as Jane spirits James Shelby, a man unjustly convicted of his wife's murder, out of the heavily guarded criminal court building in downtown Los Angeles. But the price of Shelby's freedom is high. Within minutes, men posing as police officers kidnap Jane and, when she tries to escape, shoot her. Jane's captors are employees of the man who really killed Shelby's wife. He believes he won't be safe until Shelby is dead, and his men will do anything to force Jane to reveal Shelby's hiding place. But Jane endures their torment and is willing to die rather than betray Shelby. Jane manages to escape but she is alone, wounded, thousands of miles from home with no money and no identification, hunted by the police as well as her captors. She must rejoin Shelby, reach his sister before the hunters do, and get them both to safety. In this unrelenting, breathtaking cross-country battle, Jane survives by relying on the traditions of her Seneca ancestors. When at last Jane turns to fight, her enemies face a cunning and ferocious warrior who has one weapon that they don't.

Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Fearing for their lives, fleeing dangerous situations, her clients come to her when they need to vanish completely-to assume a new identity and establish a new life somewhere they won't be found. And when people are desperate enough to need her services, they come to the old house in western New York where Jane was raised to begin their escape. It's there that, one spring night, Jane finds a young woman fresh from LA with a whole lot of trouble behind her. After she cheated on her boyfriend, he dragged her to the home of the offending man and made her watch as he killed him. She testified against the boyfriend, but a bribed jury acquitted him, and now he's free and trying to find and kill her. Jane agrees to help, and it soon becomes clear that outsmarting the murderous boyfriend is not beyond Jane's skills. But the boyfriend has some new friends: members of a Russian organized crime brotherhood. When they learn that Sara is traveling with a tall, dark-haired woman who makes people vanish, the Russians become increasingly interested in helping the boyfriend find the duo. They've heard rumors that such a woman existed-and believe that, if forcibly extracted, the knowledge she has of past clients could be worth millions.

After two decades protecting innocent victims on the run, and a year after getting shot on a job that took a dangerous turn for the worse, Jane McKinnon, nee Whitefield, has settled into the quiet life of a suburban housewife in Amherst, New York-or so she thinks. One morning as she comes back from a long run, Jane is met by an unusual sight: all eight clan mothers, the female leaders of the Seneca clans, parked in her driveway in two black cars. A childhood friend of Jane's from the reservation, Jimmy, is wanted by the police for the murder of a local white man. But instead of turning himself in, he's fled, and no one knows where he is hiding out. At the clan mothers' request, Jane retraces a walking trip she and Jimmy took together when they were fourteen in hopes that he has gone the same way again. But it soon becomes clear that the police aren't the only ones after him. As the chase intensifies, the number of people caught up in this twisted plot multiplies, and Jane is the only one who can protect those endangered by it. A String of Beads is an addictive, fast-paced thriller about how abandoning the past can sometimes be the hardest thing to do, even when your life-and the life of those you love-depends on it.