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Just a quick note

Just a quick note

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As promised, The Murder Run: The Travelers Book 6 eBook is $0.99 through February 3. So if you need to catch up on the series, now’s your chance. Here’s the universal link to your favorite store:

 https://books2read.com/u/mdzyPE

The description:

Never cheat a partner. Always get revenge. . .

The Traveling Man takes on a quick and easy safecracking job…easy until his partners are murdered and he’s on the run.

His wife is trying to settle into her new role as a rich man’s girlfriend, so she isn’t at his side.

Who are these killers who are after him? And how are they connected to the government agency that wants the envelope he took from the safe?

With the help of a new associate, he tracks the killers until he’s steered into a trap. They think he’s cornered, but he’s still got one ace up his sleeve. . .

The Murder Run is a gritty, hard-boiled crime thriller. If you like criminal intrigue, surprising plot twists, and high-speed action, you’ll love the sixth novel in the Travelers series.

…

By the way, this is the first book to make mention of Clara Garcia and the National Defense Agency, the organization that KD Thorne and Jeffery Blunt work for in the KD Thorne thrillers.

The new KD Thorne thriller, Murder at Mercy Creek, should be out as an eBook in about two weeks.

All for now. Happy reading!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year

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Still finishing up Murder at Mercy Creek, KD Thorne book 2. KD and Blunt have been sent to Mercy Creek, Iowa, to investigate the murder of an undercover FBI agent who was working on a corruption case that spans the Interstate 35 corridor.

Drug running, gun smuggling, and police corruption. A criminal cartel jealous of its turf. A local sheriff whose motives are hard to read. What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, two books of interest—

Read The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet (English translation from French). This was an award-winning French novel written in 1952. It concerns a supposed murder being investigated by a special agent who doesn’t know that the victim survived the attempt and is in hiding. The writing is stylized, following the point of view of most of the characters at some point in the text. It’s a sort of “locked box,” where all the characters know bits of what happened, and the special agent has to try to piece together the truth. Has a surprising ending.

This is a cerebral book that requires a lot of focus because you have to keep track of and separate out the various points of view, but if you like to see how far the crime fiction form can be stretched, you might enjoy it.

Also read Song of the Lion (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel). This is book 21 in the series, and the third written by Anne Hillerman, who took over the series from her father. I’ve read several of the earlier ones written by Tony Hillerman, but this is the first one of hers I’ve read.

As in all of these books, there’s lots of local color about Navajo Country (in the southwest US) and Native American ways and rituals. And the lead characters are as compelling as ever. This outing concerns a bombing that seems to be connected to a plan to build a controversial Grand Canyon resort, which environmentalists and various stakeholders oppose. Plenty of complications and a plot that’s hard to figure out until the very end. A fun read.

Finally, The Murder Run: The Travelers Book 6 will be discounted to $0.99 at the end of January. So if you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance. I’ll send out a reminder when the exact days are set.

And The Gone Sister (Lee Callaway Book 2) by Thomas Fincham is free today. I’m picking up a copy.

https://www.amazon.com/Private-Investigator-Mystery-Suspense-Callaway-ebook/dp/B0772WPK9Y

All for now. Happy reading!

Happy Holidays 2021

Happy Holidays 2021

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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!

Happy November!

Happy November!

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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!

October Reading

October Reading

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I’m in Washington, DC, for a while, but I’m still hard at work on the new KD Thorne novel. I’ll have more to say about it when I’m done with rewrites.

In the meantime–

As many of you know, I can’t pass up a discounted crime fiction classic. A few weeks ago, I downloaded a copy of Ed McBain’s Killer’s Choice (number 5 of the 87th Precinct books) from the Murder & Mayhem newsletter. It did not disappoint.

A woman working at a liquor store has been murdered. When the cops dig into her background, none of her associates agree on what kind of person she was. Was she a party girl, a free spirit, a doting mom, or a straightlaced, model employee? So the cops are at their wits’ ends trying to figure out who killed her and why. In the meantime, a cop is murdered interrupting a robbery. And the new detective feels duty-bound to catch the killer. This is a fast-paced crime book that never misses a beat.

(It’s $0.24 on Amazon today: https://www.amazon.com/Killers-Choice-87th-Precinct-Mysteries-ebook/dp/B005WZZRQU )

Also read Wendy Hornsby’s Half a Mind (Kate Teague Mysteries Book 2). This is a copy-cat killer book. A jailed psycho-killer is about to go on trial when bodies start turning up murdered in his usual way. Kate Teague’s boyfriend is the cop who caught the killer, and thus is the expert on his methods, but he has memory defects from a recent brain injury. So Kate finds herself in the middle of the action. There are lots of red herrings here, and real chemistry between Kate and her boyfriend. A fun read that kept me guessing until the end. You might want to check it out.

Happy reading!

Fall Reading and Research

Fall Reading and Research

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Still writing the new KD Thorne book. Here’s a few thrillers I’ve been reading along the way. Maybe one of these is for you.

Just read SA Cosby’s new crime thriller, Razorblade Tears. It concerns two homophobic ex-cons, one white and one black, who are on the hunt for whoever murdered their married gay sons. This is a serious, very gritty, roller-coaster ride through grief, revenge, and dealing with choices that are too late to change. I was still thinking about it two days after I finished it.

Blast from the past. Read Graham Greens’s Orient Express (originally called Stamboul Train) published in 1932. This is not Murder on the Orient Express, but instead is a suspense novel which involves the interwoven fates of a shrewd businessman, an overworked chorus girl, a vindictive journalist, and a has-been revolutionary traveling by train across Europe from Belgium to Turkey. A complex read focusing on Europe in the 1930s—nowadays really for the history buff—but kept me guessing until the end.

Finally, read Zoe Sharp’s Absence of Light (Charlie Fox #11), featuring Charlie Fox, a female professional bodyguard who’s always finding herself in trouble up to her neck. (I commented on #4, First Drop, earlier this year.)  On this outing, she’s working protection for a search and rescue team in the aftermath of an earthquake and trying, clandestinely, to solve a murder. As usual, she has to punch well above her weight to keep the bad guys at bay long enough to discover what’s what. I figured out one of the subplots about midway through, but didn’t fully understand how it was connected to the main plot until the very end. A fun read.

And on a research note, here’s an article about small town corruption:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/31/us/guernsey-wyoming-police-chief.html?searchResultPosition=9

That’s all for now!

The Hijacked Review

The Hijacked Review

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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 19th 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!

The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent

The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent

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The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent, the first KD Thorne thriller, is out now. Whoo-hoo!

(You may notice that the title has changed since the last time I mentioned it. I got some great advice from my editor, and I always try to listen to great advice.)

To celebrate the release, the eBook is $2.99 (US) for the next seven days. After that, it goes up to $4.99. (The paperback will be another six weeks.) Here’s the universal link to your favorite store: https://books2read.com/u/bMwaXv

And here’s the blurb:

Stolen nerve agent. Scheming terrorists. Federal agents running out of time.

A deadly nerve agent has been stolen from a federal containment facility. When the National Defense Agency is tasked with recovering it, operative KD Thorne and her partner Jeffery Blunt are put on point. Find the nerve agent. Eliminate the threat.

KD Thorne knows trouble.

Four tours in Afghanistan, a stint at NASA that went sideways, a marriage gone bad. She needs to work to keep her head on straight.

But as she and Blunt track the nerve agent from pharma executives and a military contractor team through white supremacists to a European far right faction, her personal life comes unraveled.

Can KD and Blunt stop the terrorists and retrieve the nerve agent before it’s released and innocents die?

The Hunt for the Hijacked Nerve Agent is a fast-moving thriller that will keep you turning pages. If you like pulse-pounding action and surprising plot twists, you’ll love the first novel in the KD Thorne series.

…

I hope you enjoy it. And I’d love to hear what you think.

Happy reading!

July 9, 2021: Summertime reading

July 9, 2021: Summertime reading

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Just a short note. We’ve been visiting family in New York City (and playing with our granddaughter), which all seems a lot more special than it did pre-covid. Hope you’re able to get out and about wherever you’re at.

The new book is back from the copyeditor, so I’m making the final adjustments. More on that in a few weeks (I hope).

Previously, I mentioned reading Richard Stark’s The Dame, the second of four books he wrote featuring Parker’s sometime accomplice Alan Grofield. (I’m a big fan of the Parker crime thrillers.) Since then I’ve read two more of these—the first one, The Damsel, and the fourth one, Lemons Never Lie.

The first one, The Damsel, which takes up with Grofield recovering from wounds he received in The Handle (Parker #8), is a little loosely plotted for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed reading it. It just seemed to me that Stark was still finding his way with Grofield as a lead character in this book. And it’s not really a heist book: the plot is more focused on a series of unintended consequences that come out of the criminal choices made by the characters.

Now Lemons Never Lie, on the other hand, a novel where Grofield’s heist plans continually go wrong, is as good as any Parker novel. The plot just buzzes along, double cross on double cross, providing a lot of suspense and surprise as Grofield tries to end up as the last guy holding the bag of money. A fun read.

That’s all for now. Happy summer reading!

June 17, 2021: The New Book part 2

June 17, 2021: The New Book part 2

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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!