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BOOKS
Click to view: I NOVELS I SHORT STORIES I NONFICTION II
  NOVELS
 

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ROCKETS' RED GLARE
"Rockets' Red Glare is an explosive debut with nonstop action and a terrific sense of place. Welcome aboard, Sage Mendiluze."
-- C. J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Battle Mountain

"Sage is the perfect hero--believable, focused, intuitive, and unrelenting. A superlative piece of writing."
-- George Stephanopoulos, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Situation Room

Perfect for fans of Jack Reacher and Joe Pickett, Rockets’ Red Glare is a fast-paced thriller that introduces Sage Mendiluze, a police deputy determined to find and stop a series of relentless and brutal murders.

After two wilderness guides are gunned down at a remote campsite in a nearby national forest, it’s determined that the fatal shots came from Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation. Tribal Police Deputy Sage Mendiluze is called in to hike the rugged backcountry and investigate. Sussing out the sniper’s perch, he and his Australian shepherd, Peak, barely escape becoming two more casualties when an IED is tripped. The site tells Sage there are two perps. The explosion confirms they are devious and extremely dangerous.

Soon, more visitors to national parks across America have been murdered. After his display of stellar investigative and tracking skills, Sage—with Peak at his side—is recruited by Special Agent Maggie Comstock to join the task force tracking the perpetrators. Every level of government—even the president himself—insists this reign of terror must end by the Fourth of July, just days away.

Clock ticking toward mayhem, Sage and Maggie are determined to stand in its way. But the mysterious murderers are just as resolute—and they intend to celebrate the holiday with a bang.

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BLUES IN THE NIGHT

Dick Lochte’s new novel is an edgy and twisted thriller about . . .
• a missing secret formula as priceless as it is deadly . . .
• a beautiful woman who may be deadlier than the formula . . .
• a surprisingly likeable mobster whose life is on the line . . .
• assorted show biz flakes, CIA wheeler-dealers, international terrorists and eccentric but effective home-grown leg-breakers . . .
• and a hero, David Mason (AKA Mace), a hardboiled ex-con returning to Los Angeles after nine years to discover that the angels who gave the city its name have long since flown the coop.

BLUES IN THE NIGHT is the adrenaline rush from award-winning writer Dick Lochte, whose novels have earned the praise of critics and many of his fellow writers, including Joseph Wambaugh, Robert Crais, Sue Grafton, Jonathan Kellerman, and Andrew Vachss, who wrote: “Pick your genre—police procedure, PI, whodunit, serial killer ... this guy can do them all. And all in the same book.” This time it’s a noir novel of redemption, a lightning-fast chase adventure, a whodunit, and a no-holds-barred love story that reads like a modern day Maltese Falcon on steroids.

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 SLEEPING DOG

"OUTCLASSES, IN MANY WAYS, THE TALES OF RAYMOND CHANDLER, ROSS MACDONALD AND OTHER RENOWNED CALIFORNIA MYSTERY WRITERS."
-- Publishers Weekly

First Holmes and Watson, then Nero and Archie, Now Leo and Serendipity--two detectives, two narrative voices, twice as much sleuthing and double the fun.  Originally published in 1985, Sleeping Dog won the Nero Wolfe Award and was nominated for the Edgar, the Shamus, and the Anthony Awards. In 1999, the Independent Mystery Booksellers's Association named it one of their 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century!

"First, imagine Katherine Hepburn at fourteen. Next, in your mind's eye, replay Humphrey Bogart, at his middle-aged best, as Sam Spade. Now picture this oddest of couples as the newest duo in detective fiction and you'll have a perfect portrait of the memorable leads in Sleeping Dog."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

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LAUGHING DOG
Hardboiled private eye Leo Bloodworth and his self-appointed partner, fifteen-year-old Serendipity Dahlquist, are back in a wild and deadly new mystery that’s every bit as brilliant and memorable as SLEEPING DOG. This time, Leo and Serendipity are on the trail of a teenage runaway and a missing pair of sapphire earrings, two seemingly separate, increasingly dangerous cases rife with gang members, designer drugs, killer birds …and a terrorist plot that could plunge sunny Southern California into a permanent nuclear winter.

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DICK LOCHTE’S TWO ACCLAIMED NEW ORLEANS NOVELS - BACK IN PRINT!


Blue Bayou
New Orleans Private Investigator Terry Manion, just out of drug and alcohol rehab, is hit by sobering news. His friend and mentor, J.J. Legendre, is dead and the cops are calling it suicide. Manion doesn’t buy it, but finding the truth is a tricky business in the Crescent City, where those connected with J.J. are rapidly becoming an endangered species. His quest is helped or hindered by an assortment of colorful characters including: a septuagenarian former madam, a Mafia don and his politically-correct son, an opera-loving hit man, a rogue cop who went to grammar school with Manion, a Southern beauty whose favorite drink is champagne and vodka with a coke chaser, a Cajun Romeo and Juliet, and a bestselling author who has earmarked Manion as his next subject.

Finally, there’s Blue Bayou, a supposedly magical section of Louisiana swampland that is as treacherous as it is beautiful, an eerie place from which no one leaves untouched -- if they are able to leave at all.


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The Neon Smile
When New Orleans PI Terry Manion agrees to work for Pierre Reynaldo, the king of exploitation TV, he winds up reopening a case the NOPD slammed shut thirty years before -- the racially motivated murder of Tyrone Pano, a black militant leader. The more Manion learns about the case, the more personal it becomes. Both his father and his mentor, J.J. Legendre, had ties to Pano that might have been better left buried.

THE NEON SMILE takes the reader back to 1965, a fateful year for Legendre, then a young, cynical homicide detective working the Pano case and a series of brutal murders committed by a cool killer who models his crimes after a 19th Century slayer known as The Meddler. Legendre seems to have put an end to the Meddler’s reign of terror. But decades later, Manion’s probing into the Pano murder brings the Meddler back to life, exposing thirty years of fear, corruption and violence.

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The Body in the Back Seat

It’s the Swinging Sixties and Harry Trauble is ready for some California Dreamin’. He’s young, single, living at a cool beach-side pad and working in Hollywood at Ogle, the nation's second most popular magazine for men. So what if the Vietnam Conflict is heating up and Watts is a racial powder key about to blow? At Ogle, with its beautiful people, amusing eccentrics and sexual freedom, it's nothing but fun and games. Unless you're worried about a company executive being crushed by a giant statue of the magazine' s jaunty frog logo . . . or the strangled corpse left in the back seat of Harry’s car . . . or the dark and sinister plan that's placed the employees of Ogle on the hit list of a very efficient assassin.

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THE BILLY BLESSING SERIES
These humorous entertainment world mysteries by Dick and Al Roker feature morning show co-host and Manhattan restaurateur Billy Blessing who always seems to find murder on the set or on the menu.
 


The Morning Show Murders

“A solid, exciting crime novel … snappy prose and well developed characters will leave readers wanting to see more of Blessing.” -- Publishers Weekly

“A crisp puzzler. Crackling dialogue and well-crafted settings.” -- Kirkus Reviews

“A witty and thrilling debut.” -- Romantic Times

“A funny, funny, very funny mystery that gallops along and has several cool twists.” -- James Patterson

“Required reading.” -- New York Post

“Terrific plot, fast, funny and full of action and adventure with even a touch of steamy romance.” -- Janet Evanovich

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The Midnight Show Murders

“Great fun, full of nifty twists and turns.” -- Carl Hiaasen

“The laughs are frequent and belly deep, and the personable tone is akin to a television mystery/comedy like The Rockford Files or Columbo.” -- BookPage

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The Talk Show Murders


“As well-paced and thoughtfully prepared as an Alice Waters tasting menu.” -- Kirkus Reviews

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THE LOS ANGELES LEGAL THRILLER QUARTET
These crime novels by Dick and attorney Christopher Darden offer a suspenseful inside look at the Los Angeles criminal justice system.
 


The Trials of Nikki Hill
(featuring Deputy District Attorney Nikki Hill and LAPD Homicide Detective Virgil Sykes)

“Twists and tension … a whiplash plot.” -- People magazine

“O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden knows the L.A. legal system like the back of his hand.” -- Entertainment Weekly

“A genuinely suspenseful crime novel with a charismatic heroine and a cast of well-drawn supporting characters.” -- Booklist
   


L.A. Justice
(a Nikki Hill/Virgil Sykes novel)

“(A) high-octane legal thriller … the kind of frenzied page-turner many authors aspire to and few deliver.” -- Publishers Weekly

“An exciting topical legal thriller.” -- Chicago Tribune

“A sizzling page-turner … The story is pure dynamite with a solution that will knock your socks off.” -- Romantic Times
   


The Last Defense
(featuring defense attorney Mercer Early)


“Nonstop action from courtroom to barroom to bedroom … a fast ride with a jolting, surprise finish.”

“A blockbuster legal thriller, crammed to the gills with pith, moment, racial insights, courtroom chicanery, sexual shenanigans and countless other delights.” -- Chicago Tribune

“Exciting and engrossing … This crime-fiction dream team ‘s most satisfying work yet … worthy of legal thriller masters such as Steve Martini and John Lescroart.” -- OC Metro magazine
 


Lawless
(a Mercer Early mystery)

“A crackerjack crime yarn (that) offers an embarrassment of riches. -- Publishers Weekly

“A wildly entertaining rollercoaster ride through L.A. legal corridors.” -- Booklist
 
 
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