Michael P. King

Whatever you’re celebrating this season, I wish you and yours the very best.

Woo-hoo! Murder at Mercy Creek, KD Thorne book 2, is off at the copy editor. After an undercover FBI agent working for an interagency taskforce is murdered, KD and Blunt are sent to Mercy Creek, Iowa, to run a parallel investigation into drug and gun smuggling and police corruption up and down the Interstate 35 corridor.

Meanwhile, two books of interest—

Recently finished The Job (Fox and O’Hare Book 3), by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. These are a series of tongue-in-cheek comic crime books featuring FBI agent Kate O’Hare and con man Nicholas Fox, who set up stings against most-wanted felons. On this outing, Fox is being impersonated by someone committing crimes and he and O’Hare set out to catch the culprit, which leads them finally onto the trail of a secretive mega drug dealer. Lots of fun.

Also read Palm Beach Poison (Charlie Crawford Palm Beach Mysteries Book 2). I’ve read two in this series previously. This time out, Charlie and his partner Mort Ott are trying to solve a series of murders connecting Russian mobsters to suspect real estate deals. As usual, a well-plotted and fast-paced read.

I’ve read 42 books so far this year, which is a pretty good number for me. I’m always on the lookout for a great read, so please let me know about the best thrillers you’ve been reading, and I’ll put them on my list. All for now.

Happy reading!

The new book is at the copyeditor. It’s not a Travelers book, although it takes place in the Travelers world.

Been wanting to tell you about it for a few months—it’s been hard to hold back—but I wanted to make sure all the pieces of the puzzle fell together properly before saying anything.

This new book, The Hunt for the Hijacked Viruses, follows National Defense Agency operative K.D. Thorne and her colleague Jeffery Blunt as they track down viruses that have been stolen from government labs as part of a money-making scheme that dissolves into an intended terrorist attack.  It’s a trail involving pharma executives, military contractors, white nationalists, and European terrorists.

(You might recall National Defense Agency operative Clara Garcia from Travelers books 6 and 8.)

K.D. is a US army captain with a PhD who’s done a stint at NASA. Blunt is a SEAL-trained special operator. It’s their first mission together, and K.D. has to get her personal life sorted.

In the meantime, last month, I downloaded a copy of LynDee Walker’s Fear No Truth, the first is her Texas ranger Faith McClellan series. I have to admit I didn’t finish it. It was well reviewed and well written. It just didn’t move fast enough for me. (That’s why there’s more than one book. Everyone likes something a little different.)

Instead, I opened a copy of Zoe Sharp’s fourth Charlie Fox novel, First Drop. Charlie Fox is a tough-as-nails British woman, who, on this outing, is a bodyguard for a spoiled Florida teenager and soon finds herself on the run, protecting this teenager from assorted killers, while trying to find the teenager’s father and figure out why the killers are after the boy. Sharp’s plotting, pacing, and character development are first-rate. I’ll be reading more of these.

That’s all for now. Happy reading!

Looking forward to getting out and about this summer. Finally. Starting with my niece’s wedding at the end of the month. It will be great seeing all the kin I haven’t seen since—when? The last wedding!

Not quite on the countdown to the new book, but I’m hoping to have it at the copyeditor’s before we leave town for the wedding. It’s NOT a Travelers book, but it takes place in the Travelers’ world. The plot concerns Capt. KD Thorne and her partner Jeffery Blunt, operatives with the National Defense Agency. (You might recall Clara Garcia and the National Defense Agency from Travelers books 6 and 8.) Anyway, I’ll have more to say about The Hunt for the Hijacked Viruses as it gets closer to being released.

Just read Robert Crais’s LA Requiem, the 8^th Elvis Cole/Joe Pike book. I’ve mentioned previously that I particularly like the books in this series that focus on Joe Pike. This one slips in the complicated backstory that explains just how Joe Pike becomes the silent, sunglass-wearing, dangerous and yet loyal man of action we see in the series. An excellent crime thriller.

Last month, I mentioned that I downloaded a copy of Red Means Run by Brad Smith. This is a classic who-done-it, where the hero is wrongly accused of murder and the reader is given the clues as the story progresses. (I was almost at the end before I figured it out.) Set in upstate New York, with detailed characters and crisp dialogue. Well worth a read.

Also read S is for Silence, a Sue Grafton novel featuring her detective Kinsey Millhone, which concerns a cold case of a missing woman from a small town. Was she murdered or did she run away? I’ve read several of Grafton’s alphabet series, and I’m always impressed by the way Grafton handles the details in the story, as well as with Kinsey’s emotional range. A fun read.

LynDee Walker’s Fear No Truth is free today. I’m going to check it out. Here’s the link if you’re interested.

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-No-Truth-LynDee-Walker-ebook/dp/B07KYTLJ6S

That’s all for now. Happy reading!

It’s the dog days of summer. Vacation is long over. Had a great time in California with our kids—Muir Woods, wine country, hanging out playing board games. Here in the college town where we live, the students are filtering back into town. Two more weeks and the population will be almost double what it is now. The stores will be jammed with students furnishing their rooms and buying groceries. Going to make sure I don’t need to go to Walmart until after Labor Day.

The Casino Switcheroo: The Travelers Book 7 is on track to be released this fall. But due of circumstance beyond my control, it will probably be released in the beginning of October instead of in September as I had originally hoped. (sad emoji goes here)

The first week of its release, the eBook will be priced at $0.99. After that it will go up to $4.99, but don’t worry, I’ll be keeping you in the loop so at you’ll be able to download at the special release week price.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to hold you over until the release of The Casino Switcheroo, I’ve found another free eBook promo. Midsummer Murders & Mysteries is live now. https://books.bookfunnel.com/midsommer-murder-mystery/cotiaq4ba5

As usual, you get a free eBook for an email list signup. Hope you find a book you enjoy.

Happy reading!

The Traveling Man (book 1) has a new cover. So now its cover matches the other covers in the series. Back when The Computer Heist (book 2) came out, I didn’t know its cover would become the pattern for the rest of the covers. Hindsight, eh? You can take a close up look at the new cover here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019DGN21A

(The content of book 1 has not changed, only the cover.)

The Casino Switcheroo, book 7 of the Travelers series, is off at the copy editor. But to get to The Casino Switcheroo, we have to come through The Murder Run.

The Freeport Robbery (book 4), The Kidnap Victim (book 5), and The Murder Run (book 6) all feature James Denison, first as a mark of sorts, and then later as Mrs. Traveling Man’s love interest. (You remember, don’t you? It’s complicated.)

So when The Murder Run opens, she’s in San Francisco getting up to mischief with a new gal pal, while the Traveling Man’s out east trying to outrun and outgun the killers who tailed him from a safecracking.

It’s one wild ride to the finish line, and when it’s over, they’ll be ready for The Casino Switcheroo. 

Do you need to catch up? You can check out the description to The Murder Run here:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07M7F95G8

Happy reading!

Howdy, Michael here,

Hope you’re enjoying your summer. Some Travelers Group list members have asked how the Travelers series came to be. Well, part of it was planning and part was serendipity.

Initially, I wanted to create a crime fiction series that was fun to read and fun to write. I especially liked old school crime thrillers, like those by Hammet or Chandler, and I liked super realistic crime TV shows and movies, like The Wire or True Detective. And, as I’ve mentioned in lots of places, I’m fascinated by people’s tendency to want something for nothing. But how could these interests be combined?

So I read, or reread, a lot of crime thrillers, focusing on the types of characters other writers were creating. I read John Sanford, Lawrence Block, Patricia Cornwall, Robert B. Parker, Richard Stark, Patricia Highsmith, Jo Nesbo, Kate Atkinson, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Sue Grafton, just to name a few.

There seemed to be plenty of alcoholic, ne’er-do-well private eyes and cross-the-line cops. I didn’t think I could add anything new there. And the idealistic do-gooder—well, that really wasn’t my thing. A con man, on the other hand, I thought maybe I could do something interesting with that. And so the Traveling Man was born, a seasoned con man, a manipulator who lives by a code to only rob crooks, as he defines them, a grifter with only one weakness—his wife.

But as I began to write the story of the Seanboro land grab and explore the possibilities of the various criminals and criminal wannabes who were hoping to get rich, the wife became a more and more important character, until I was writing not just about the Traveling Man, but about the two of them, and how the nature of their relationship affected their choices. The two of them pitted against a crime boss, a gang of thugs, and the cops. And so the Travelers were born.

If you haven’t yet read The Traveling Man: The Travelers Book 1, the eBook is free on Amazon today through Thursday July 12 so that new readers can find out about the series. Here’s the link: http://amzn.to/1Nnd373

Have a read and then drop a review to tell me what you think. A few words will do. Here’s the review link: http://amzn.to/2eS8rdW

Thanks for reading,

Michael

travelers@michaelpking.org

https://michaelpking.org

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