Jennifer Billingsley

A prisoner is released from custody on the condition that he becomes a stool pigeon for the FBI to help them incriminate a corrupt sheriff. Good ol' Southern boy Gator McKlusky has served four years of his five-year prison sentence for moonshining, up to this point a model prisoner. When he learns that his younger brother, college student and activist Donny McKlusky, was murdered, his bound dead body found in a Bogan County Lake, he is able to convince the authorities to release him early in return for him finding evidence against the suspected culprit, Bogan County Sheriff J.C. Connors, not for the murder of which they have no idea of the McKluskys' suspicions against Connors, but concerning an active but somewhat cold IRS file, namely yet unproven but well-known unreported lucrative profits in bilking moonshiners. They also know that the sheriff is crooked in other ways, but the IRS only has the jurisdiction on the tax evasion issue. They provide Gator with a souped-up car fit for moonshine runs that would be able to outrun almost any on road vehicle, and a contact in Bogan County: Dude Watson, a mechanic who has no option but to cooperate despite his own fears about Connors, in he being a con on probation, the conditions which they know he has broken. In turn, Dude is able to set Gator up with moonshiner Roy Boone to infiltrate the business in the county as one of his runners. The IRS's goal, which has its inherent risks for Gator in him needing to provide names of moonshiners, is secondary for Gator, who just wants to avenge Donny's murder. But Gator could have bigger problems if the Sheriff gets wind that the Feds are after him via Gator and/or Dude, they or anyone connected to them possibly ending up like Donny if he has his way. —Huggo

A group of Green Berets return from Viet Nam and go on a cross country road trip which will result in a shocking conclusion.

A woman trapped in a home elevator is terrorized by a group of vicious hoodlums. Recuperating from a broken hip sustained four months ago, wealthy Cornelia Hilyard had a portable elevator installed temporarily in the home she shares with her thirty year old single son, Malcolm Hilyard. Shortly after Malcolm leaves for the extended July 4th weekend during a summer heatwave, Cornelia gets trapped in the elevator when a short circuit occurs, the front grated elevator car hovering approximately ten feet above her living room foyer, she only having access to those few items she brought into the elevator with her: beyond those items on her person, a book, a transistor radio, her cane and a vase containing a single flower. All her efforts to get out using the elevator's emergency functions only attract the wrong elements as two associated but disparate groups break into her house initially with the sole purpose of robbing her of everything, they able to do so partly in being able to conduct their business out of her view. In the process, none of the five people involved seem to care about her whatsoever. Things change when one of the five, Randall Simpson O'Connell, the leader of the group of younger thugs, he who has spent most of his formative years in a reformatory, decides that in addition he wants to commit murder, including of Cornelia. If Cornelia is able to survive in the short term, the nature of the situation may further change due to something that Malcolm had left for her just before he left. —Huggo The lady is Mrs. Hilyard, a wealthy poetess who lives in a three-story city mansion and her cage is her elevator, which stops a dozen feet short of the main floor due to an electrical failure on a July 4th weekend. She rings her outside alarm, eventually noticed by a drunken derelict, who breaks into the house, ignores her plight and helps himself to various items and alcohol. He leaves with his loot but returns a while later with a curvy prostitute and three teenage hoodlums, who proceed to terrorize Mrs. Hilyard as they wreck her home. —alfiehitchie