Never Again, Richard La Plante promised after he and his new wife completed building their family home in East Hampton, New York.But he did not keep his promise. Instead, he bought twenty acres of raw land on a mountaintop located three and half thousand miles away, in a small town that he had only visited by internet... And the nightmare began. A house in New York to sell, a massive loan to pay off for the newly purchased land, dishonest builders, some of the most stringent building codes in America and the economic collapse of 2008. With no general contractor, because they had decided to save money by doing it themselves, La Plante and his wife face an empty bank account, a black widow spider infestation and a large wooden frame with no windows. With two young sons to raise, a stony silence between them and a marriage counselor who says in sagely fashion, "There's only one answer. Finish the house," the La Plantes stumble from hilarious disaster to not-so-hilarious disaster to ultimate success.Never Again is a seven-year chronicle of trial and triumph, both a warning and inspiration to anyone trying to build a dream.
In recent weeks, three young women have been brutally assaulted and murdered in the city of Philadelphia. Lt. William Fogarty, a time-toughened cop, hardened by personal tragedy, is shocked by the brutality of the crimes. His only lead comes from medical examiner Josef Tanaka. Half Japanese and half American, Tanaka, a skilled practitioner of the martial arts, claims to recognize the method used in the attacks: a karate strike known as nukite, or spear hand. Fogarty has nowhere else to turn. An unlikely combination, Fogarty and Tanaka, forced together by circumstance and neither completely trusting the other, they conduct a desperate hunt, trawling the city streets of Philadelphia and into the dangerous underbelly of the killing arts. Pursuing the Mantis, a creature who uses the flesh of his victims in a sadistic, macabre ritual of self-purification, while Fogarty and Tanaka endanger the lives of those closest to them as they inch perilously close to the precipice of their own worst fears and weaknesses.
