T. Jefferson Parker |
 |
|
    
|
The Border Lords In this riveting new novel, Parker demonstrates once again why The Washington Post said he writes "the best of today's crime fiction," and why he has won the Edgar Award three times. ATF agent Sean Ozburn is deep undercover supporting the sicarios of the Baja Cartel when he suddenly goes completely dark, his only communications being the haunting digital videos he sends to his desperately worried wife, Seliah. Charlie Hood must determine if Oz is simply chasing demons deeper undercover than anyone has ever gone, or whether his friend has suffered a permanent break with his mission and his moral compass. A crime novel of unprecedented scope and unrivaled storytelling ambition by one of our most treasured talents, The Border Lords revisits the fevered landscape of America's southern border-and confronts the unexplored depths of humanity's dark soul.
|
|
Los Angeles Times bestseller T. Jefferson Parker ranks among the very top tier of contemporary crime writers, and his new series has received some of the most effusive reviews of his already stellar career. In L.A. Outlaws, Parker introduced Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood, plunging him into a glamorous, fast-moving world of antiheroes-and antiheroines. In The Renegades, Hood was ensnared in a major case of police corruption. BookReporter.com raved: "And while, again, The Renegades is complete in itself, my gut feeling is that with L.A. Outlaws and a future novel, it will form a trilogy that will stand as the high-water mark of Parker's work. In the meantime, a year seems too long a time to wait to find out." The wait is over. Iron River is here. |
||
California Girl The Orange County, California, that the Becker brothers knew as boys is no more -- unrecognizably altered since the afternoon in 1954 when Nick, Clay, David, and Andy rumbled with the lowlife Vonns, while five-year-old Janelle Vonn watched from the sidelines. The new decade has brought about the end of the orange groves and the birth of suburban sprawl. It is the era of Johnson, hippies, John Birchers, and LSD. Clay becomes a casualty of a far-off jungle war. Nick becomes a cop, Andy a reporter, David a minister. And the decapitated corpse of teenage beauty queen Janelle Vonn is discovered in an abandoned warehouse. A hideous crime has touched the Beckers in ways that none of them could have anticipated, setting three brothers on a dangerous collision course that will change their family -- and their world -- forever. And no one will emerge from the wreckage unscathed. |
|
|
The Renegades |
|
|
Summer of Fear While a serial killer butchers entire families in Orange County, crime writer Russ Monroe investigates the murder of his ex-lover and finds himself caught in a duplicitous web involving the city's homicide chief. |
|
|
Pacific Beat Ex-cop Jim Weir thought he'd seen it all during his years on the force. That is until he saw the body of his sister Annie, brutally used by a monster in human form, then carelessly discarded. He'd never seen such grief ravage the face of his friend and brother-in-law Ray Cruz, a good cop on the Newport Beach Police Department. When Weir learns that the only witness swore the killer made his escape in a Newport Beach squad car, his disbelief turns to confusion and outrage. Now the anguished Weir is on the killer's trail, looking for answers among his former colleagues, but he's going up against a solid wall of silent blue. And just out of sight, a fractured shadow of a man watches Jim's progress with twisted amusement as he waits for his time to come. |
||
Little Saigon In the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, thousands of desperate refugees fled the killing fields for new lives in Southern California. But for those who settled in "Little Saigon," the war never really ended. The latest victim of the continuing struggle is Li Frye, a popular singer whose songs of hope and home have made her a heroine to her people. Ripped from the stage by masked gunmen, she has vanished into the dark alleys of Little Saigon, where outsiders are met with suspicion and a stony silence as impenetrable as the steaming jungles of Vietnam. |
|
|
Laguna Heat Laguna... Laguna... Laguna... Laguna Heat |
|
|
L.A. Outlaws Rookie Deputy Charlie Hood discovers the bodies, and he prevents an eyewitness—a schoolteacher named Suzanne Jones—from leaving the scene in her Corvette. Drawn to a mysterious charisma that has him off-balance from the beginning, Hood begins an intense affair with Suzanne. As the media frenzy surrounding Allison’s exploits swells to a fever pitch and the Southland’s most notorious killer sets out after her, a glimmer of recognition blooms in Hood, forcing him to choose between a deeply held sense of honor and a passion that threatens to consume him completely. With a stone-cold killer locked in relentless pursuit, Suzanne and Hood continue their desperate dance around the secrets that brought them together, unsure whether each new dawn may signal the day their lies catch up with them. |
||
Storm Runners This is classic Parker, matching the wits of reluctant hero Matt Stromsoe with his former high school classmate, Mike Tavarez. As teenagers they fell in love with the same girl. Stromsoe gets the girl and a career as a hometown cop. Tavarez puts his Harvard education to work heading a Mexican Mafia, La Eme. The plot and characters are pure Parker: "Stromsoe was in high school when he met the boy who would someday murder his wife and son." Tavarez gets a life sentence for the killing that was intended for Stromsoe. Stromsoe nurses his grief and injuries for a couple of years before agreeing to a gig providing security for Frankie Leigh, a meteorologist from a San Diego television station. But this weather girl does more than just report on the weather -- she's trying to manufacture it. Continuing her great-great-grandfather's lifework, she is trying, literally, to make rain. And along the way she has acquired a stalker and made some powerful enemies, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. (continues)
With Parker's typically captivating characters, suspenseful action, sun drenched settings and intruguing plotline, this is another unforgettable crime drama sure to please Parker's dedicated fans.
|
||
The Fallen "My life was ordinary until three years ago when I was thrown out of a downtown hotel window. My name is Robbie Brownlaw, and I am a homicide detective for the city of San Diego. I am twenty-nine years old. "I now have synesthesia, a neurological condition where your senses get mixed up. Sometimes when people talk to me, I see their voices as colored shapes provoked by the emotions of the speakers, not by the words themselves. I have what amounts to a primitive lie detector. After three years, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the colors and shapes of other people's feelings, unless they don't match up with their words." (continues)
When Garrett Asplundh's body is found under a San Diego bridge, Robbie Brownlaw and his partner, McKenzie Cortez, are called on to the case. After the tragic death of his child and the dissolution of his marriage, Garrett -- regarded as an honest, straight-arrow officer -- left the SDPD to become an ethics investigator, looking into the activities of his former colleagues. At first his death, which takes place on the eve of a reconciliation with his ex, looks like suicide, but the clues Brownlaw and Cortez find just don't add up. With pressure mounting from the police and the city's politicians, Brownlaw fights to find the truth, all the while trying to hold on to his own crumbling marriage. Was Garrett's death an execution or a crime of passion, a personal vendetta or the final step in an elaborate cover-up? Amid rampant corruption and tightening city purse strings, whatever conclusion Brownlaw comes to, the city of San Diego -- and Brownlaw's life -- hang in the balance. A carefully woven novel of suspense, The Fallen brings to life a superb cast of characters against the all-too-real backdrop of a city fighting for its survival. Hailed by critics as "a powerhouse writer" (New York Times) and "a thinking man's bestseller" (Washington Post), T. Jefferson Parker delivers his most elegantly written, suspenseful, and moving novel yet. |
||
Cold Pursuit Homicide cop Tom McMichael is on the rotation when Pete Braga, an 84-year-old city patriarch, businessman and former mayor is found by the beautiful young nurse hired to watch after him-bludgeoned to death. The Irish McMichaels and Portuguese Bragas share a violent history: as a commercial tuna clipper captain way back in 1952 Pete Braga shot dead a young crewman who believed he was owed a paycheck. That man was Franklin McMichael, Tom's grandfather. Pete Braga's son, Victor, who was then thirteen, is then severely beaten behind a waterfront bar one night. Most people believe that Franklin's son-Tom's father-did it in revenge. Victor survives the attack, but he's mentally stunted. Though his body matured, his mind remains that of a ten-year-old. The alleged attacker-Gabriel-has denied it for his whole dissolute, wasted, booze-filled life. The nurse looks good as a suspect. She claims to have gone out for firewood that night, then returned from the store to find Pete dead. She's covered with blood and not forthcoming with McMichael and his partner, Hector Paz. The investigation expands to Pete's business acquaintances, his family, the Catholic diocese in San Diego, a multi-million-dollar Indian casino manager, an old cop buddy, a prostitute, and some expanding incongruities between the nurse's story and the evidence that they continue to find. It's a tale of blood feuds, secret passions and long-held resentment that will have readers spellbound until the final shocking pages.
|
|
|
A Merci Rayborn Novel (Hyperion, 2002) Merci Rayborn, T. Jefferson Parker's stubborn, principled Orange Countydetective, is almost alone in believing that deputy Archie Wildcraft didn't killhis beautiful young wife and then turn his service weapon on himself. Theevidence against Wildcraft--now hospitalized with a bullet lodged in hishead--seems overwhelming. But Merci, who's still unpopular for exposing an oldpolice scandal that caused the death of one cop and the ruination of others(The Blue Hour), isresisting pressure from her boss and a headline-hunting D.A. to arrest Wildcraftand charge him with murder.Then the deputy, who's lost his memory and maybe his mind as a result of hisinjury, goes missing from his hospital room, intent on tracking down the realkillers and managing to stay a step ahead of Merci. Soon, they both begin torealize that Gwen Wildcraft wasn't killed because she got in the way of anattempted hit on her husband--it was the other way around. Parker, whose skillsat characterization are as well honed as his expert pacing and intricateplotting, has penned another standout that will keep readers guessing andgasping until the last dramatic page.
|
||
A Novel (paperback: Hyperion, 2002) (hardcover: Hyperion 1st ed., 2001) With the horrible remnants of a childhood tragedy forever visible across his otherwise handsome face, Joe Trona is scarred in more ways than one. Rescued from an orphanage by Will Trona, a charismatic Orange County politician who sensed his dark potential, Joe is swept into the maelstrom of power and intimidation that surrounds his adoptive fathers illustrious career. Serving as Wills right-hand man, Joe is trained to protect and defend his fathers territorybut he cant save the powerful man from his enemies. Will Trona is murdered, and Joe will stop at nothing to find out who did it. Looking for clues as he sifts through the remains of his fathers lifehis girlfriends, acquaintances, deals, and enemiesJoe comes to realize how many secrets Will Trona possessed, and how many people he had the power to harm. But two leads keep rising to the surface: a little girl who was kidnapped by her mentally disturbed brother, and two rival gangs who seem to have joined forces. As Joe deepens his investigationand as he is forced to confront the painful events of his troubled childhoodthese two seemingly disconnected threads will intersect. Just how and why form the crux of this intricate, intelligent mystery that satisfies the mind as well as the heartand reveals yet again the impeccable detail, vivid characterization, and emotional complexity that make a T. Jefferson Parker novel impossible to resist.
|
|
|
Red Light Two years after the death of Tim Hess, her partner and father of her child, Merci Rayborn, the Orange County homicide investigator introduced in Parkers insanely imaginative (The New York Times Book Review) Blue Hour, is back. Merci has finally gotten her life together. She and her son are living with her father, a retired cop, and she is dating Mike McNally, a respected fellow officer. When a young prostitute is found murdered and Mike emerges as the primary suspect, Merci must do the unthinkableexpose and arrest her lover. With her world turned upside down, Merci must sift though the facts and balance where the truth leads her against where her heart is telling her to go. This taut, psychologically complex police procedural brings T. Jefferson Parker and his daring heroine, Merci Rayborn, into the front ranks of this popular genre. Praise for The Blue Hour: T. Jefferson Parker is one of the most under-rated thriller writers working in North America today. The Calgary Sun on The Blue Hour Ingenious, intricate, complicated yet credible, a real page-turner. Los Angeles Times If youre seeking a thinking mans bestseller, T. Jefferson Parker is the writer for you.
|
||
The Blue Hour "Parker has only one competitor -- Thomas Harris." At once horrifying, tense and lyrical, The Blue Hour is a beautifully written novel that probes the darkest recesses of the human psyche. He takes the women from shopping malls. They are beautiful, sophisticated, but he treats them like animals, and when he's done he leaves only his grisly signature to taunt the Orange County police -- a purse full of entrails. Where are the bodies? How can these women disappear so completely? Whatever the Purse Snatcher has done to them, it surely cannot be worse than the imaginings of a shock-hardened police force -- but they don't know the sick mind they're dealing with. Detective Hess has given his life to the police, but now lung cancer is looking to claim him. Merci Rayborn is at the beginning of her career and she's determined to get to the top, whatever it takes. Assigned to the case by a boss with a hidden agenda, Hess and Merci at first agree on just one thing: they want to catch the Purse Snatcher and see him fry. But as another woman disappears, and then another, they become united through their obsession with a case that will change both their lives forever. |
|
|
Literati also recommends:
|
||
|
|
