The Pain Hunter (The Broken Doll Book 1) by Jeffery Deaver
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The Pain Hunter (The Broken Doll Book 1)

by

Jeffery Deaver

(Author)

4.2

-

5,263 ratings


A violent jailbreak bleeds into a street fair in Wisconsin. In the wake of the carnage, a getaway van barrels down a rural highway. Inside are two men with a tenuous bond: an obsession with pain.

One is Paul Offenbach, a sadistic crime boss with a life-threatening bullet wound. The other is his hostage, Dr. Stuart Collier, now faced with a harrowing ethical quandary. Mile by mile, as a calculated battle of wills and wits plays out, the killer plots his next move. So does the doctor, sworn to do no harm but desperate to escape.

From internationally bestselling master of suspense Jeffery Deaver comes The Pain Hunter, part of The Broken Doll collection, a series of interconnected short stories about killers and prey, justice and revenge, that can be read or listened to in a single breathless experience.

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Print length

61 pages

Language

English

Publisher

Amazon Original Stories

Publication date

December 12, 2022


Popular Highlights in this book

  • You can’t make up for all your sins from birth to now; who has the time and fortitude? No, it’s a few select transgressions we target and we whittle away at, even if we can’t make them vanish entirely.

    Highlighted by 92 Kindle readers

  • Two types of pain. His attention focused. I wasn’t aware of that. Three actually. There’s also psychogenic pain.

    Highlighted by 76 Kindle readers


Product details

ASIN :

B0BKH74LNJ

File size :

3045 KB

Text-to-speech :

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Screen reader :

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Enhanced typesetting :

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Word wise :

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeffery Deaver is the New York Times bestselling author of forty-five novels and eighty short stories. His books are sold in 150 countries; have been translated into twenty-five languages; and have received or been short-listed for dozens of awards, including the Edgar, Anthony and Shamus.


Sample

Thursday, April 20, 6:52 p.m.

“Find the nearest hospital,” Dr. Stuart Collier called out. “Now. If you don’t, he’s going to die.”

The driver of the van, in his midthirties, with a mass of impossibly thick black hair, glanced toward the stalk-mounted GPS. The man in the passenger seat, slimmer and with trim blond hair, typed in a search.

A moment later a selection came up. The driver glanced at the screen. “Seven minutes.”

“Go” was Collier’s response.

The driver punched the accelerator and the cumbersome vehicle sped up. He was hunched over the wheel. In their haste to get on the road, he had not put his belt on. The van dated to an earlier era and while a light glowed out the infraction there was no mosquito-itch of a repeating beep.

Different hair, different builds, the men wore related clothing. The driver was in jeans and a faded gray tee. The passenger—who was clipped in—was in a blue work shirt and gray dungarees, stained. Maybe grease, Collier guessed; his rugged hands and prominent knuckles gave the impression he could be an automotive mechanic. Both of the men in the front wore black jackets.

The doctor glanced at the aftermarket navigation system. Five minutes.

In the back, where a dozen backpacks and gym bags rested, were Collier and the injured man. There were no seats—the van was a delivery model—and the kneeling doctor was gripping a tie-down bar with one hand and keeping pressure on the impromptu dressing of a wad of paper towels halfway between groin and knee. A tourniquet on the man’s thigh was also slowing the ooze.

At one sharp turn, Collier nearly fell backward, though he managed to remain upright. Then they were on a winding and badly maintained southern Wisconsin rural road going double the limit.

The MD wore after-work casual—dark-brown slacks and a tan polo shirt under a navy-blue windbreaker.

The patient, a fortyish-year-old named Paul Offenbach, wiped his forehead sweat with his shirtsleeve. He was handsome, with a well-proportioned face, presently paler than it had been earlier in the day. The thick beard, also dark, accentuated the ashen shade. He’d discarded his jacket, and Collier had removed the man’s shoes, socks and slacks.

His head pressed back, and a grimace of pain washed over his face. A deep inhalation. Then he looked once more at Collier.

“And this?” Offenbach pointed to his cheek, where there was a deep, jagged cut. Had he turned his head just a few inches to the right when the injury was sustained, he’d be blind in that eye.

“We won’t worry about it for now.” Collier’s response was assured.

At the GPS’s female monotone of directions, the driver made a turn onto an even rougher road. The vehicle bounced. Offenbach moaned, closed his eyes.

The hump of wide sun was melting into the horizon, igniting low clouds, orange above the van. They paced the vehicle in the streaming breeze. Leaves tumbled and danced in the wake and in the wind.

The doctor released the tourniquet. He had never used the device in his practice. But like many physicians summoned by fate to treat an unexpected patient, he could draw on training from a distant past. He recalled that the tension had to be released every so often to allow blood to flow, despite the wound, to keep the limb vital.

The coursing blood brought with it more pain to the man’s leg. Offenbach gasped and stretched his head back once more, unsuccessfully dodging the agony.

Now, for the first time, Collier noted two other injuries. The little and ring fingers of his patient’s left hand were taped together and swollen. And there was a dark bruise on his jaw. Neither of these had happened during the incident today.

The man was in fit shape. This would work to his advantage. Trim, athletic people, Collier recalled a professor in medical school telling the class, were easier to treat, had a better chance of survival and a faster recovery.

Collier himself was slim as well. His six-foot, three-inch frame bordered on gangly. He had a long face in a head crowned with straight, sandy hair, a comma of which dipped toward his right eye. He too was fit; after work every day he bicycled five miles home and on weekends might pedal twenty miles through the countryside.

“What’s your . . .” Offenbach’s jaw clamped shut. A deep breath. He tried again: “What’s your thing, your specialty?”

“Emergency room.”

Offenbach said nothing, not registering his good fortune that an ER doctor was present in a situation like this. His dark, still eyes looked over his unexpected clinician.

“We’re here,” the driver said, at the same time the GPS lady said essentially the same, though in the second person voice. He pulled into the entryway of the hospital, which was deep in the hinterland of Harbinger County.

They rolled into the back parking lot, where five cars—a Mercedes and four low-end sedans—sat, beside two ambulances. Here, the building was windowless for three stories; patients’ rooms began above that.

The engine shut off. Offenbach struggled to sit up. He gasped from the effort and the pain and he blotted sweat. With a grunt, he pulled his large silver pistol from beneath him, where he’d stashed it after they’d gotten into the van.

He aimed at Collier’s chest.

“Back there in Upper Falls? You saw what I did to that woman.”

A nod.

“What did I do?”

Collier swallowed and inhaled deeply. He controlled himself. “You shot her in the neck. You killed her.”

The scene reeled through the doctor’s mind for the tenth time since it had unfolded.

He was seeing the bullet from Offenbach’s pistol, this same pistol, ripping open the jugular, spraying blood into the air, like the turquoise water reaching for the sky from the fountain at Maple Street Park, the site of many a family Sunday afternoon.

Seeing blood on the long blonde strands of hair, splayed out in a soft disk on the sidewalk.

Hearing the scream, piercingly loud, though it was coming from the throat of a young girl.

“So you understand the stakes for you.”

Collier’s stare was the acknowledgment.

Offenbach managed to find breath. “Go. He’ll”—he pointed to the slim, somber passenger in the front—“be right beside you every step of the way.”

Lucky.

Harbinger County Sheriff’s Office deputy Peter Jacobson was in a profession where superstitions abounded. Not unusual when you considered that on any particular day you could be run off the road, punched, knifed, shot.

And so the solid man, 210 pounds and six two, believed that there existed certain forces—God, whoever or whatever—that were looking out for you.

This might just be one of those situations.

Lucky . . .

He was at a gas station on Sycamore Valley Highway, sitting in the back office, scrubbing through security video that had been shot over the past half hour. The small room smelled of cigarette smoke, despite the big sign of prohibition above the computer.

“Anything, Deputy?”

“May . . . be.” The word stretched out as he concentrated. He was speaking to Derek, who managed the station. His uniform offered ample evidence as to who the tobacco violator was.

Jacobson was interested in one particular two-second clip. He scrubbed once more, back and forth.

The entire county was electric, after the nightmare in Upper Falls just thirty minutes ago, a daring jailbreak that had spilled into the middle of a street fair, resulting in a bloody, fatal shooting and a kidnapping. Dozens of bullets fired.

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About the authors

Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver

Jeffery Deaver is an international number-one bestselling author. His novels have appeared on bestseller lists around the world. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into over twenty-five languages. He has served two terms as president of Mystery Writers of America, and was recently named a Grand Master of MWA, whose ranks include Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Mary Higgins Clark and Walter Mosely.

The author of over forty novels, three collections of short stories and a nonfiction law book, and a lyricist of a country-western album, he’s received or been shortlisted for dozens of awards. His "The Bodies Left Behind" was named Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers association, and his Lincoln Rhyme thriller "The Broken Window" and a stand-alone, "Edge," were also nominated for that prize. "The Garden of Beasts" won the Steel Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in England. He’s also been nominated for eight Edgar Awards by the MWA.

Deaver has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, the Strand Magazine’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award in Italy.

His book "A Maiden’s Grave" was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin, and his novel "The Bone Collector" was a feature release from Universal Pictures, starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Lifetime aired an adaptation of his "The Devil’s Teardrop." NBC television recently aired the nine-episode prime-time series, "Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector."

You can find out more about Jeffery on his website www.jefferydeaver.com, Facebook page facebook.com/JefferyDeaver, and follow him on Twitter @JefferyDeaver.

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Reviews

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

5,263 global ratings

D.C. George

D.C. George

5

Really Struggled...

Reviewed in the United States on March 21, 2024

Verified Purchase

...between giving this four or five stars. What's there is great, but, as Deaver makes clear, it's merely a part of a greater whole. Looking forward to reading the rest.

Mystery Reader54

Mystery Reader54

5

Great

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

Nice little short stir about making g people believe what you want them to believe. I want to read the rest quickly

clday

clday

5

Wow...loved this story...the Medical and Psychological aspects

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2024

Verified Purchase

Great story that could really be believed. And the doctor talking about pain, etc just really added to tge belief in the whole story...LOVED IT and highly recommend it!!!

Blue Eyes

Blue Eyes

5

Jeffrey Deaver wont’t let you down

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2024

Verified Purchase

An injured felon - gunshot would to the leg - in the back of a van with a hostage who happens to be a doctor. An interesting conversation while the gunshot wound is being treated. But who comes out alive?

Thomas G. Cummings

Thomas G. Cummings

5

An excellent first book in the series

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2024

Verified Purchase

When a criminal stages a jailbreak that quickly gets messy with one dead officer and a kidnapped doctor the story takes off on a fast pace. Lots of action and a surprise ending. Look forward to reading the next book.

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