Showing results by author "Blake Banner" in All Categories

It was November in New York. Raining and cold, and the trees all looked like skeleton’s hands. And Detective John Stone was having a problem with habeas corpus, because all there was of the body were two bare arms. Two bare arms that somebody, 12 years ago, had put in a lock up in the East Bronx. What they had done with the rest of the woman, nobody knew. But as Stone and Dehan start to investigate, two things become clear: Whoever killed the woman, wanted her arms to be found, as a boast, as a challenge. And that meant they were dealing with a psychopath—a serial killer.

To most people, the threat of a nuclear holocaust was something that belonged to the years of the Cold War, something they associated with the United States and the Soviet Union, something that was laid to rest by Gorbachev and Reagan, back in the ‘80s, when the Berlin Wall came down. So when Alia Gallin’s murder was reported to ODIN agent Alex Mason, the last thing he thought of was that this could be part of the build up to a nuclear war. All Mason could think of was his rage, finding the killers and punishing them.

ODIN is an organization which is above top secret. It coordinates intelligence from the so-called Five Eyes The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—and it acts on that intelligence. For that reason it’s level of security is the highest on the planet.

Sue Benedict wasn’t giving out treats, so she got the trick. It was one hell of a trick. The killer, who made no effort to hide his identity, had vanished without a trace–just like the one witness who might actually have known what happened that night. And 12 years later, the case is as cold as Sue Benedict and the icy December wind coming in off the East River.

The Russians have a special way of gambling. They take a revolver and they place one round the chambers and spin it. Then they take it in turns to put the gun to their heads and pull the trigger. It’s called Russian Roulette. Now they have a new, deadlier way of playing it.

In the wake of the Vietnam debacle, when the mighty USA was humiliated by Soviet-backed Vietcong, the CIA plotted to drag the USSR into a "Russian Vietnam" in Afghanistan. The plan was such a success it led ultimately to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, 40 years on, as Russia limps, scarred and crippled, from the battlefields of Kherson, Donetsk, and Kharkiv, Colonel Alexandrina Vitsin swears to drag the USA into an American Ukraine.

It seemed to be a cold case like any other. So much so that Stone and Dehan hadn’t even considered reviewing it—until private investigator Karl Baxter requested a copy of the police file. Then Stone got curious. Why did a second-rate PI in the Bronx want to look into the case of a low-life petty criminal found tied to a chair in his apartment, beaten and shot through the heart? And that question led to other questions, like, whose was second pool of blood on the floor? If there was a second victim, where was the body?

When detectives John Stone and Carmen Dehan, who run the Cold Cases Department at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx, choose their honeymoon together, there are three things they are very clear on: There must be good steak and whisky, it must be remote, and they must forget about work, cold cases, and murder for two weeks.

When the body of a tramp was found in a dumpster on Lafayette and Bryant in the Bronx, with no papers and no ID, the case was filed as unsolved–another victim nobody cared about, shot by some punk nobody cared about. That was 12 years ago. Then Detective Stone notices that the "tramp" had a $100 haircut and manicured nails. That makes him curious. He wants to know, who dresses a murder victim up as a tramp, then leaves them in full view in a dumpster? But the answers he gets are not the ones he expects.

The Cold Cases team at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx tend to focus on homicides. But now, Detective John Stone, head of the team, is curious about a two year-old rape case. A rape case where Sadie Byrne got HIV, turned out to be a rapid progressor and died of AIDS within a year. She never named her attacker.

A leak at GCHQ–the UK’s version of the NSA–means that sensitive Allied and Israeli intelligence is being fed to Iran and Israel’s wider enemies. ODIN, the Five Eyes’ ultra-secret Special Operations Office, has teamed up their best operative, Alex Mason, with the Mossad’s Captain Aila Gallin to investigate and plug the leak.

The world population is hurtling toward nine billion; some say more than the planet can support. Two titanic blocks rule that population – East and West – bound together in a global economy - and a secret, war to the death. Never has so much been at stake, never has the prize of absolute power been more seductive. And never have the leaders of these titanic blocks been quite so insane. Insane enough to invoke the Son of Hell, to bring the war out of the shadows and fire down from Heaven; and count the dead not in dozens but millions.

When a leading international financier is murdered in his Beverly Hills mansion, at first it looks like just another daemon at work in the City of Angels. But when the ritual nature of the killing emerges, the FBI takes an interest. And then the international connections start to emerge: the European Commission, high-ranking officials in Hong Kong...and Iran. That’s when the file gets passed to ODIN and Alex Mason.

Saul Epstein was used to trouble. When you’re the world’s most successful investigative journalist, and you devote your life to exposing the crimes of the great and the powerful, you learn to expect trouble. That’s why Saul was a recluse, that’s why he had no intimate circle, no close friends….

When detectives John Stone and Carmen Dehan who run the Cold Cases Department at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx choose their honeymoon together, there are three things they are very clear on: there must be good steak and whisky, it must be remote, and for two blissful weeks they must forget about work, about cold cases and about murder.

In a world where anarchy and crime are surging, the man who calls himself Rogue begins his search for the truth – about who he is, what he’s done, and above all else, why? Friend and foe draw near. Offering aid. To find answers. To seek truth. But who can be trusted? And who secretly plots to destroy him? LA private detective Dave Martial seems genuine, but who is the man really? Then there is Special Agent Elroy Jones, and the enigmatic Dr. Elizabeth Grant who seems to know more about him than he knows of himself. Are their motives pure? Or is there more than lies beneath the surface?

There is a time bomb ticking down toward a global extinction event. The bomb has a name, and everybody knows where it is. In fact, people pay to go and see it, and have picnics around it. It’s called the Yellowstone Caldera, and when it next blows it will probably take out mankind.

Ten years in the British SAS have turned Lacklan Walker into a supreme killing machine. That, and his twisted, dysfunctional family. His father, a Boston Brahmin Billionaire, taught him how to hate. His English Aristocrat mother taught him he didn’t belong. And when his only friend and childhood sweetheart, Marni, wanted to teach him how to love, he walked away from her, knowing all he would ever be good at was killing, and war.

Rogue is a man with total amnesia. A man searching for himself. But all he finds is a brutal killer with a deep hatred for narcos. Then somebody tells him: find Kristos. Kristos, the elusive figure who might hold the key to his forgotten past. The hunt takes him to a desolate town in North Dakota in deep winter, then goes cold. Very cold. With a brutal snowstorm moving south from Canada and the disappearance of a mother and daughter from a local ranch, Rogue can't ignore the family’s cry for help.

Sue Benedict wasn’t giving out treats, so she got the trick. It was a hell of a trick. She was raped and murdered in her apartment after attending a Halloween party with a bunch of art students. The killer did not use a condom or gloves, the CSI team got a perfect DNA profile and two perfect thumbprints from her throat, a witness saw her admit the killer to her apartment at 2:30 AM that night.