A seemingly impossible prison escape. A powerful and corrupt company. And a little boy's life hanging in the balance. Three startling plot threads come together as deputy U.S. marshal Tim Rackley faces the most deadly adversary of his career—a man whose lethal skills, cunning, and single-minded determination make him a mirror image of Rackley himself.

Walker Jameson, dishonored Recon Marine, has pulled off an impossible break from California's Terminal Island Penitentiary. After starting a riot, he literally vanishes from his cell, leaving behind only a cup of mouthwash, a strand of dental floss tied to one cell bar, and the body of a sadistic killer.

Tim Rackley, elite man hunter, must solve the riddle and track Walker down. But uncertainty begins to color the mission as Rackley learns more about his quarry and the death of the escaped prisoner's sister, a suicide that looks increasingly like a murder. Walker, too, has begun a bloody investigation of his own, a mission that propels him through the dark underworld of a big pharmaceutical company and its cutting-edge therapeutic viruses. But the life of Walker's nephew, a young boy suffering from a fatal disorder, hangs in the balance, and if Rackley hopes to stop the bloodshed, he must put the pieces together, even if it means battling a lethal opponent every inch his equal.

A riveting thriller, a shocking look behind the scenes of one of America's most corrupt corporate sectors, and an exploration of the depths of a mother's love, Last Shot is a white-knuckled, complex drama, full of razor-sharp action and startling twists and turns, written by one of the finest suspense novelists working today.

The American Civil War began on April 12, 1861, when forces of the newly declared Confederacy fired on the Union garrison at Fort Sumter. At the time, the South had only one fighting ship, four small cutters, and a limited number of commercial vessels. Building facilities were limited to a few small yards in Florida and Virginia, and none had the capacity to build in the dimensions and materials needed for fighting ships. A few days after Fort Sumter surrendered, President Lincoln ordered the Union navy to initiate a blockade of all Southern ports, adding a proviso that any privateers caught sailing under Confederate colors would be jailed and hung.

Blockading more than three thousand miles of coastline was a colossal task, but the effort was largely successful and quickly began to have effects far beyond America's borders. In England, where 80 percent of the cotton consumed in that country's massive textile industry came from the Southern states, thousands of unemployed mill workers were thrown onto the streets. France, where the populace was laboring under the rule of Napoleon III, was in much the same boat. Within months the looms of England and Europe slowed nearly to a halt. Exports of cotton goods, which had reached a value of approximately a billion dollars in 1860, were almost choked off, and with the market so disrupted, the leaders of the Confederacy quickly realized that the war could not be won without a supply of ready cash.

Britain's prime minister, Lord Palmerston, firmly believed that a dissolution of the burgeoning, juvenile America was inevitable (and indeed, like many European heads of state, would probably have preferred such a thing) but nonetheless felt it would be unwise to interfere in the conflict. As a result, two weeks after the blockade began, England officially recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent and issued a proclamation outlining the principles of Britain's neutrality: Her Majesty's subjects were not to enlist in the armed forces of either side, break the blockade, or allow their ships to transport soldiers, military supplies, or dispatches for either side. They were further enjoined from building, arming, or outfitting any vessel that might be used as a ship of war.

Politically, Palmerston's desire for a hands-off policy was sound, but the forces of international trade quickly drove cracks into his country's presumed neutrality. Sniffing enormous profits, British ships began running the blockade with regularity, smuggling goods into the South which could be traded at extortionate rates for cotton that in turn would be nearly priceless in Europe. So great were the margins that captains of "moon chasers" operating out of Nassau in the Bahamas were often paid as much as $10,000 in gold for a single voyage, equal to nearly $160,000 today.

Lucrative as it was, however, the amount of cotton the blockade runners could get through the Union stranglehold was insufficient to supply Europe's needs. In June Lord Palmerston wrote to England's foreign minister, John Russell:

This cotton question will most certainly assume a serious character by the beginning of next year; and if the American civil war has not by that time come to an end, I suspect that we shall be obliged either singly or conjointly with France to tell the northerners that we cannot allow millions of our people to perish to please the Northern States.

In return the foreign minister proposed that England team up with France early in the coming year to act "on a grand scale" to force terms on the Americans....

Gregg Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed author of The Tower, Minutes to Burn, Do No Harm, The Kill Clause, The Program, and Troubleshooter. He holds a B.A. in English and psychology from Harvard University and a master's degree from Trinity College, Oxford University. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is currently writing his next novel and adapting The Kill Clause for Paramount Pictures. For more information, go to www.gregghurwitz.net.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.