NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • How far would you go to save your family? In this masterwork of “terrific suspense” ( The Philadelphia Inquirer ), a mild-mannered family is tormented by an obsessed criminal—and decides to take matters into their own hands. With an Introduction by Dean Koontz “A powerful and frightening story.”— The New York Times Sam Bowden has it all: a successful law career, a devoted wife, and three children. But a terrifying figure from Bowden’s past looms in the shadows, waiting to shatter his pristine existence. Fourteen years ago, Bowden’s testimony put Max Cady behind bars. Ever since, the convicted rapist has been nursing a grudge into an unrelenting passion for revenge. Cady has been counting the days until he is set free, desperate to destroy the man he blames for all his troubles. Now that time has come. Originally published as The Executioners Praise for Cape Fear and John D. MacDonald “The best of [John D. MacDonald’s stand-alone] novels . . . an acute psychological study of base instinct, terror, mistakes, and raw emotion.” —Lee Child “A powerful and frightening story.”— The New York Times “Terrific suspense.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer “ The great entertainer of our age, and a mesmerizing storyteller.” —Stephen King “My favorite novelist of all time . . . All I ever wanted was to touch readers as powerfully as John D. MacDonald touched me. No price could be placed on the enormous pleasure that his books have given me. He captured the mood and the spirit of his times more accurately, more hauntingly, than any ‘literature’ writer—yet managed always to tell a thunderingly good, intensely suspenseful tale.” —Dean Koontz “To diggers a thousand years from now, the works of John D. MacDonald would be a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen.” —Kurt Vonnegut “A master storyteller, a masterful suspense writer . . . John D. MacDonald is a shining example for all of us in the field. Talk about the best .” —Mary Higgins Clark “The consummate pro, a master storyteller and witty observer . . . John D. MacDonald created a staggering quantity of wonderful books, each rich with characterization, suspense, and an almost intoxicating sense of place.” —Jonathan Kellerman “There’s only one thing as good as reading a John D. MacDonald novel: reading it again. A writer way ahead of his time, he is the all-time master of the American mystery novel.” —John Saul John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short-story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel The Executioners, which was adapted into the film Cape Fear . In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980, he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life, he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business, he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986. One Sam Bowden lay on his back under a high Saturday sun, eyes closed, right hand clasping the fading chill of half a can of beer. He was aware of the nearness of Carol. Digestion of the picnic lunch was proceeding comfortably. Jamie and Bucky were thrashing around in the brush on the small hill behind the little beach, and Sam knew it would soon be time for eleven-year-old Jamie to send six-year-old Bucky down to them to ask if it wasn’t time to go back into the water. Other years Nancy would have been racing and whooping with the younger kids. But this year Nancy was fourteen, and this year she had brought a guest along--a fifteen-year-old boy named Pike Foster. Nancy and Pike lay baking in the sun on the foredeck of the Sweet Sioux III, with a portable radio turned to the odd offerings of a progressive disk jockey. The Sweet Sioux was moored a hundred feet down the curve of beach, her bow ten feet off the sand, and the music was barely audible. Sam Bowden lay with the sun coming red through his eyelids and tried, almost with desperation, to tell himself that all was right with his particular world. Everything was fine. This was the first expedition of the year to the island. The Bowdens would make three or four trips to it this year, the same as every year since 1950, when they had found it, the year before Bucky was born. It was a ridiculously small island twelve miles out into the lake, northwest of New Essex. It was too small to have a name. It merited a single dot on the charts and a warning of shoal waters. It had a hill and a beach and reasonably deep water just off the beach. Everything was under control. The marriage was of the very best variety. Everybody was healthy. He had been a partner in the law firm ever