On this episode of Word Crimes, Eryk Pruitt reads "Farewell from a Desert Rat" by Erik Storey.

Erik Storey is a former ranch hand, wilderness guide, dogsled musher, and hunter. He spent his childhood summers on his great-grandfather's homestead or in a remote cabin in Colorado's Flat Tops wilderness. He has earned a number of sharpshooter and marksman qualifications. He and his family live in Grand Junction, Colorado.

NOTHING SHORT OF DYING is Erik Storey's first novel, and it's won praise from a lot of people, including bestselling author William Kent Krueger, who called it "the year's best thriller debut."

NOTHING SHORT OF DYING features a drifter with lethal skills, whose mission to rescue his abducted sister pits him against a ruthless meth kingpin and his army of killers.