My travels have been quite adventurous, purposely or by accident. I’ve visited 32 countries, 5 of them Communist. I look below the surface. I love the jungle and even Mexican police. My young reader novels have elements of crime. I knew and know a lot of tough guys and use elements of them in my characters. Crime weaved through much of my 32-year firefighting career. Firefighter crime thrillers are rare. Firefighters do come in contact with crime: bomb threats, meth labs, child abuse, arson of all sorts, murder, assaults, drownings, and as they say ‘much, much more’. I’m glad to be retired.
This fabulous story is more or less historical fiction adventure.
From the first page when a Pakistani village wakes up, the exotic tone is set. Add a burned-out war correspondent and a young Afghan man with a wild, dangerous family steeped in warring traditions and you get a tale like no other. Crossing into Afghanistan for them is fraught with peril, suspicion, deceit, and suspense as both risk their lives in separate agendas. Loved it.
A slice of a time period in Afghanistan which is in a state of flux after the Russians retreat and before the U.S. gets involved. And a shocking twist.
The sun did not rise in Peshawar. It seeped - an egg-white smear that brightened the eastern horizon behind a veil of smoke, exhaust and dust. The smoke rose from burning wood, cow dung and old tires, meager flames of commerce for kebab shops and bakers, metal-smiths and brick kilns. The exhaust sputtered from buzzing blue swarms of motor rickshaws, three-wheeled terrors that jolted across potholes, darting between buses like juiced-up golf carts.' Into this smoky chaos of sprawling humanity comes Skelly, a burned-out American war correspondent, now in harness again thanks to a messy divorce and too many children.…
The novel touches on the world of human trafficking and how often people go missing without anyone realizing it.
Its dark world is a burgeoning industry where children are abducted for profit and pleasure. The dogged protagonist follows a thin trail and unearths a huge ring of pedophiles. The pace and dialogue are excellent.
I learned how deep that world is and how easily it is for overwhelmed investigators to simply give up and relegate the files into cold cases.
A young girl vanishes without a trace in the dead of night.
Was her menacing absentee father involved? Or did something even more sinister occur?
In the tenth installment of the best-selling Joe Dillard series, Joe finds himself turning 50 and on the brink of despair. His involvement in his law practice has tapered to the point of near retirement. He spends his days with his wife, Caroline, who is finally succumbing to the ravages of cancer after a decade-long battle. His son, Jack, is struggling with alcohol abuse and self-loathing after accidentally killing a…
The difference in this crime novel is that the protagonist is Mailer, a German investigator working for a Euro outfit.
His knowledge of Cambodia and their culture is wonderful. I’ve been to Cambodia and only saw a thin edge of this. Mailer is by far no super tough guy but he is dogged. Even though he is experienced and realizes there might be some danger he does end up in plenty of trouble.
His enemies attempt to obfuscate his investigation physically as well as his friends and contacts. Great imaging. Vater places you in Phnom Penh and villages with sounds and smells.
Detective Maier has a new case. This time it is a cold case: investigating the death of Julia Rendel's father, an East German culture attaché who was killed near a fabled CIA airbase in central Laos in 1976.
But before the detective can set off, his client is kidnapped right out of his arms. Maier follows Julia's trail to the Laotian capital Vientiane, where he learns different parties, including his missing client, are searching for a legendary CIA file crammed with Cold War secrets.
The real prize, however, is the file's author: someone codenamed Weltmeister, a former US and Vietnamese…
Okay, so you’ve read cop stories, PI tales, and lawyer crime fiction. How about a railroad detective? Yeah, they are for real.
Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell and her trusty dog have an intimate knowledge of the railroad and who uses it. Not often is she called in for murder but when she does she bites off more than she can chew. She occasionally has a bit of romance with someone so it fills out that end of things.
She is vulnerable yet tough. I never knew railroad police went so deep into investigations. Gotta read her tales.
A young woman is found brutally murdered, and the main suspect is the victim's fiance, a hideously scarred Iraq War vet known as the Burned Man. But railroad police Special Agent Sydney Rose Parnell, brought in by the Denver Major Crimes unit to help investigate, can't shake the feeling that larger forces are behind this apparent crime of passion.
In the depths of an icy winter, Parnell and her K9 partner, Clyde-both haunted by their time in Iraq-descend into the underground world of a savage gang of rail riders. There, they uncover a wide-reaching conspiracy and…
So good it was made into a movie. The movie however didn’t catch the suspense, and the investigation took far longer in the book.
Set in Stalinist Russia, the book is depressing, as was Commie Russia. The investigator, Leo Demidov’s friend has a child gone missing and a cursory investigation by the state goes nowhere. Leo Demidov, a Moscow investigator looks into it and is told to lay off—or else—because he makes the state look incompetent.
He and his family are exiled far away from Moscow and scorned by everyone. But he continues and discovers 44 children have been murdered along a railway line. Suspense and peril in this story combined with a vengeful Communist bureaucracy and its astounding ego make for a real thriller.
I visited the USSR in the late 70s and that bureaucracy is not to be challenged in any way or form.
MOSCOW, 1953. Under Stalin's terrifying regime, families live in fear. When the all-powerful State claims there is no such thing as crime, who dares disagree?
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An ambitious secret police officer, Leo Demidov believes he's helping to build the perfect society. But when he uncovers evidence of a killer at large - a threat the state won't admit exists - Demidov must risk everything, including the lives of those he loves, in order to expose the truth.
Vancouver Fire Captain Gerry Ormond is inadvertently thrust into the spotlight while rescuing a child. Honored with a Governor General’s Medal of Valor, Ormond accepts the award in Ottawa and while in Ontario returns to his hometown to visit his elderly father. His presence unleashes a series of events that bring old crimes and deeds back into the light of day. Old enemies, old friends, and family dynamics spin Ormond into a maelstrom of memories and emotions. Add into the mix a vengeful arsonist and a fire investigator whose inquiries are coming far too close to the truth, and he finds his obsessive need for control is sliding through his fingers. Time and guilt coalesce into a vise closing irrevocably on the decorated fire captain.
My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.
It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to the family's country manor house, where Mattie isolates and old ghosts start to come out of the woodwork.
It's a story about loss and depression; it's a story about friends who don't let you walk through the valley of death alone.
Ambrose Bancroft returns to London society with his younger sister, hoping they'll leave ghosts of memory behind. They have only each other left. While Ambrose attempts to draw Mattie out, dragging her to balls and threatening to seek suitors for her, his sister recoils from his meddling. Finally, when Ambrose compels her to attend art class before she's ready, Mattie paints something horrific enough to banish them from society in public disgrace.
At Linwood Manor, Mattie and Ambrose aren't as alone as they think. Taking advantage of Mattie's desperate need to find freedom, a vanishing room lures Ambrose's sister into…
