Michael P. King

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends. Hope you have a safe and fun-filled gathering.

Still working on the new KD Thorne thriller—tentatively titled Murders at Mercy Creek. Five twenty-something friends have been murdered in Mercy Creek, Iowa. One of them was an undercover FBI agent investigating drug and gun smuggling down Interstate 35 from Iowa to the Mexican border. Police corruption may be involved, so KD and Blunt have been tasked with running a parallel investigation. Hope to release it in January.

Meanwhile, two books of interest—

Recently finished The Last Mona Lisa, by Jonathan Santlofer, which was one of People Magazine’s best books of summer. Luke Perrone, a struggling artist and art professor, is tracking down information about his grandfather, who stole the Mona Lisa in 1911. Was the genuine Mona Lisa returned to the Louvre or was it replaced with a forgery? And why did his grandfather steal the painting in the first place?

Perrone’s journey takes him down a rabbit hole of theft, forgery, and murder as he travels from Florence to Paris to New York following the trail that leads to the last Mona Lisa. A fast, fun read.

Also read The Blackbirder (1943) by Dorothy B. Hughes. She wrote a number of crime novels, starting in the 1940s, and was an important influence on the genre. This is one of the earlier ones, told from the point of view of a young woman on the run from Nazi spies in the US during World War Two. We only know what she knows, and she’s constantly misinterpreting what she sees and consequently being manipulated by bad players. Still, she manages to find her way clear by the end.

Read this book because I’d read a later book by Hughes, In a Lonely Place (1947), about a screen writer who might be a murderer, which was made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart. Loved the movie. The book is quite different from the movie, and, I think, better. If you were going to read one Hughes book, this would be the one.

All for now. Happy reading!

Here in Ames, Iowa, the university semester is starting up, and the students are back, so it feels a little like fall even though the weather is still hot. What’s going on?

First off, the Kirkus review of The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent is now out. Kirkus calls it: “A thriller that offers an undeniably entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the beach.” I’m very pleased. You can read the whole review here:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-p-king/the-hunt-for-the-hijacked-nerve-agent-kd-thorne/

Now that The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent is out, and I’m at work on a new book, I’ve been getting some reading done.

Just a reminder, the books I comment on here are usually discounted eBooks I got from Bookbub, Early Bird Books, or Murder & Mayhem, which are the three discount eBook sites that I think have the best quality books right now. (I don’t get a special deal from these sites. It’s just where I’m buying my discount eBooks.) Here are three thrillers that are really different from each other and all excellent.

Recently read Sara Paretsky’s 19^th V.I. Warshawski novel (2018), Shell Game. It’s been a while since I’ve read one of her books, and she does not disappoint. It starts out simply enough, with Warshawski trying to help a friend’s nephew avoid a murder charge and at the same time trying to hunt down her missing niece, but quickly devolves in a complex case involving scam loans, artifact thefts, crooked billionaires, and undocumented refugees. Lots of details about Chicago, lots of action and suspense. Paretsky is still at the top of her game.

Also read Martin Limon’s GI Bones, the sixth of his novels that follow two US army criminal investigators (Sergeants Sueno and Bascom) in 1970s South Korea. It was a National Public Radio Best Book of the Year (2009). On this outing, they’re investigating a cold-case missing/murdered GI and hunting down an officer’s delinquent teenage daughter. The local color here (both South Korea and US military) is fabulous and the story races along. A fast, fun read.

And finally, just read The Border, the third book in Don Winslow’s Power of the Dog trilogy. I read the first book in this trilogy earlier this year. This is an excellent novel about the drug war in the US and Mexico that follows the exploits of a former DEA agent. Rich, fleshed out characters, and a complex, suspenseful plot about corruption and justice. It was named best book of the year by a number of outlets. A great read.

That’s all for now. Happy summer reading!