The Getaway Conspiracy - Paperback

by Kris Michael McKenna (Author), K. A. Plouffe (Author)

Rutherford County, Texas. 1975.

The sign at the county line says it all: The Crossroads of America. Route 68 cuts straight through the heart of the county, connecting traffic from every point of the compass - trucks hauling cattle, guns, and things that don't appear on any manifest. The locals call it the Stop. They've learned not to ask questions about what passes through.

When federal prisoner Mr. Gold is scheduled for transport through Rutherford County on his way to testify before a grand jury, the careful balance Sheriff Marx has maintained for years begins to collapse in real time. Gold knows names. The ledger his bookkeeper has been hiding knows numbers. And somewhere in the Northstar Bank vault, five million dollars in untraceable bills is sitting in two duffel bags, waiting for whoever is smart enough - and ruthless enough - to take it.

Everyone wants it. Everyone has a plan.

The junkyard crew - Don, Skinny, and Wheels - have spent two days welding armor plates to a 1970 SS Chevelle and loading stolen military weapons. They've been written off by the bosses above them, left to take the fall when the operation collapses. They've decided to take the money instead.

The Travelers - known only as Mr. Black and Mr. White - arrived from Tennessee in a black Plymouth Scamp with orders to eliminate the witnesses and disappear. Professional killers, almost mythological in law enforcement circles. But five million dollars changes the terms of any contract.

And Sheriff Marx and his deputy Handle - decorated Vietnam veterans, deeply corrupt, and smarter than anyone gives them credit for - have been working their own angle from the beginning. They know the terrain. They know the players. And they know something no one else does.

Caught in the middle is U.S. Marshal Wesley Linwood, dispatched from Austin on what was supposed to be a routine prisoner escort. Six months sober, recently demoted, and constitutionally incapable of following orders, Wesley arrived in Rutherford County expecting to be bored. Instead, he finds a town holding its breath - and a conspiracy layered so deep that by the time he understands what he's looking at, it's already too late to stop it.

The Getaway Conspiracy is a neo-noir crime thriller set in the dust and heat of rural 1970s Texas, where loyalty is the rarest currency and everyone is crossing everyone else. Adapted from the WGA-registered screenplay by Kris Michael McKenna and K.A. Plouffe (Registration #I223715), the novel expands the original story into a full-length work of literary crime fiction - preserving the triple-crosses, moral ambiguity, and the slow-burn tension of the source material while giving readers deep access to the calculations, fears, and dark humor of every player at the table.

In the tradition of early Cormac McCarthy and classic 1970s American crime cinema, this is a story about what people do when the game is already rigged - and they decide to flip the table.

Five million dollars. Three crews. One score. And only one way out of Rutherford County.