Siren's Tears
An Alton Rhode Mystery
The death of a spider monkey in a South American rain forest is the prelude to a series of apparently unsolvable human murders in Canada and the United States.
Only when private investigator Alton Rhode is approached by an elderly Catholic priest who may know more than he lets on does the killer have anything to worry about. Nagged by doubts about the priest's story, but urged on by an unlikely underworld ally, Rhode starts to piece together the mystery. His hunt for the truth spans thousands of miles and makes him a target of a diabolical killer who uses sex to seek perverted revenge.
|
Hurricane Fats
A Cole Sudden Thriller
Auburn Longstreet’s Caribbean-based Ponzi scheme took in $300 million at his offshore bank before he was caught.
Thousands of small investors, lured by fanciful and falsified interest rates, lost their life savings, as the slippery six-foot-four con man eschewed restitution. Instead, he spent the bulk of the money on stateside lawyers and crooked politicians who kept him out of jail. He also prudently put aside millions to pay off some favored clients (drug cartels) that would otherwise have cut him into little pieces.
But the greedy Longstreet wasn’t satisfied. He decided to keep $35 million that “rightly” belonged to a New Orleans mob boss – by arranging to have the mobster tried and convicted on financial evidence he secretly supplied the Feds. Even better, the jailed mobster dies in prison thinking it was one of his own crew who turned on him!
Longstreet thought he was in the clear, free to dabble with the mob’s millions in Florida’s distressed real estate market.
Enter the dead mobster’s brutal son, who finds out the truth. He wants to avenge his father – but only after getting back the $35 million.
Add a literate but lethal Government spy, a laconic Las Vegas hit man and a Category 5 storm into the volatile mix and HURRICANE FATS, the first of the Cole Sudden thriller series, builds to a shattering climax.
|
Laura Lee
An Alton Rhode Mystery
A neighborhood security guard apprehends a woman, Elizabeth Olsen, gun in hand, fleeing a mansion. Inside, John Denton, a prominent banker with weird sexual tastes, lies dead, shot many times in the face.
The District Attorney, in an election year, will prosecute the case himself, which everyone regards as open and shut. After all, the deck is stacked against Elizabeth: She acknowledges that Denton was her lover; the fatal bullets came from the gun she was holding; her prints were on the weapon, and she had gunshot residue on her hand.
Her story has more holes in it than the victim: She entered the darkened house, found the body, was frightened by a movement, picked up the gun and fired at a shadowy presence.
Needless to say, no one believes Elizabeth, not even her high-powered lawyer.
But her wealthy father does, and hires Alton Rhode, a private investigator, to clear her.
Rhode has a reputation for accomplishing the impossible. But like just about everyone, he has doubts about Elizabeth, a sexy, amoral party girl. Yet, he uncovers just enough information to keep him going.
Then the case takes an even more tragic turn, sending Rhode on a journey into the past, where he uncovers a startling secret that changes everything and threatens everyone.
With scenes set in New York and Georgia, nothing is really as it seems in LAURA LEE, a novel of sexual perversion, revenge, blackmail and, ultimately, redemption.
With a quirky moral code that doesn’t allow him to take the easy way out, Rhode puts his own life on the line to protect two women he believes have been grossly abused.
Then a final, incredible revelation forces him to enlist some unlikely allies on both sides of the law to set things right.
|
Madman's Thirst
A Jake Scarne Thriller
Private investigator Jake Scarne is in a funk, still haunted by his last case. He’s been letting himself go, physically and mentally, content to chase errant husbands and cash easy paychecks.
But then his best friend asks for a favor he can’t refuse. Seeking personal and professional redemption, Scarne sets out to find out who is behind the rape and murder of young school girl.
The police are convinced the brutal crime was random. Right from the start Jake knows better. The only problem: He can never reveal the source of his information.
The one man who can prove what really happened has disappeared, and may even be dead. But the tough ex-cop turned P.I. has no choice but to try to find him. His seemingly hopeless search puts him in the sights of powerful figures who cannot afford to have the man found and the crime solved. It’s a potentially deadly situation – for Jake and the people he loves.
Combining international intrigue, and introducing an assassin for the ages, MADMAN’S THIRST is the long-awaited sequel to SOUND OF BLOOD.
With crucial scenes set in Paris, New York, Florida and the Bahamas, MADMAN’S THIRST is a Jake Scarne thrill ride at its best. [Read More]
|
It’s always important to kill the right person – just be sure that you know who he really is!
That’s a mistake Jesús Garza and Christian Keitel make one dark, sultry night on Miami Beach. Innovative and strangely likable (albeit with a bent for the macabre), the two assassins were just following orders.
But now they’ve set off a chain reaction of revenge and tragedy that threatens a billion-dollar financial empire built on murder, fraud and political corruption.
Enter Jake Scarne, a rogue cop turned private eye, who is sent to Florida by a grieving father to uncover the truth about his son’s death. Bodies pile up from coast to coast, as Scarne finds himself in the crosshairs of a powerful media baron, vicious mobsters, various sets of homicide cops, the F.B.I. – and a beautiful woman that men hate to love, but do.
With crucial scenes set in New York, Seattle, Argentina and the Caribbean, Sound of Blood will hook the reader right up to its last, stunning twist. [Read more]
|
Capriati's Blood
An Alton Rhode Mystery
Alton Rhode is recently back from military duty, recovering from wounds, when a beautiful woman asks him to find the bank-embezzler lover who fathered her daughter and disappeared 14 years earlier.
The man, she says, doesn’t know about his child but may hold the key to saving her life. Rhode, whose private investigation business withered when his reserve unit was called up, takes the case, although it seems hopeless.
If the F.B.I. can’t find the father, how can he? That turns out to be the least of Rhode’s problems, as he almost immediately becomes the target of a deranged mobster.
He only survives because a mysterious guardian angel – with an automatic pistol – is watching his back.
It soon becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems.
Bodies pile up as Rhode’s search takes him from a college campus to a nursing home to a Florida orange grove.
And, finally, to a revelation he never sees coming. [Read More]
|
|
Lawrence De Maria is a contributor and board member of the
Washington Independent Review of Books. To read his reviews, click here.
|
nsw-90qx6kmp3whbd9ond6ua5yfamf2duxbupblc1-6887lpve-sg1f77n3qp8acrwyk9zadd2k58bfa1zl6i0vl8s1sfzdpmn02qictltja7xwec84az7-t7jici8bnw0se
|
|
|
