Showing results by author "Jerry Bader" in All Categories

As a Jew whose parents survived the Nazi concentration camps, I learned life is fragile, and survival arbitrary. As a jockey, I developed an approach to life of living in the moment, of pushing the envelope, of reacting first, because not reacting can cost you the race, or maybe your life. Jockeys are modern day serfs that travel the country picking up rides where possible, for the most part earning scraps, guaranteed to be seriously injured. Did I bend the rules? Yes. Did I break many of them? Most certainly, because that's the way the game is played.

Art and artifact investigator Axel Webb is asked to investigate a lawyer, A. Barton Bailey. The lawyer claims he represents a client willing to sell a portfolio of paintings by 20th-century bad-boy, Welsh portrait painter, Augustus John. Bailey approaches the Art Gallery of Ontario, owner of what is arguably John’s best work, a portrait of the flamboyant Marchesa Luisa Casati. The bohemian excesses of Augustus John and Luisa Casati, his occasional sexual partner, friend, and muse for over forty years, are legendary.

The Jockey is the true story of a young boy from the wrong side of the tracks who, because of his size and toughness, is offered a position to train as a jockey. It soon becomes clear that the business is less about winning horse races than it is about making money. He resists the temptation to join the extralegal side of the business until he is confronted by the facts of racing life: Horse racing is a blood sport, and jockeys rarely survive without life-altering injuries.

The Sūn Collection auction of Qing Dynasty snuff bottles at the Shangri-la Hong Kong Hotel was highly anticipated. Three super-wealthy international financial magnates wanted the collection, but only one could get it. The winner, Canadian Kyan K. Tomkins, represented by Alastair Hughes, snagged the prize. Tomkins’ British competitor, Sir Benedict Foxcroft, had to settle for two miniature jade Fu Dogs. American Michael C. Bullock was represented by his daughter-in-law, Wu Jing.

English artist Alice Bulbeck and her twin brother, Edward, approach Axel Webb to find a lost Shakespeare play entitled The History of Cardenio. The play, performed only once for James I, has been lost for 400 years. It wasn’t included in the 1623 First Folio published by Shakespeare’s friends after his death. It is the only known play credited to William Shakespeare that has never been published. The question is, why?

Little Frankie Darling wants revenge, Asami Sato wants her inheritance, and Oyabun Kitsune wants the magic artifact hidden in the 150-year-old cherrywood box. They each pay investigator, Axel Webb, to find the box, but things are not always what they seem, and people always lie to conceal their secret agendas.

What would you do to be rich? Not just rich, but fabulously rich. Perhaps you are that unique soul that has no dreams, no aspirations, no agenda…. Well, if you are, good luck. It must be a very dreary existence. But if you’re like the rest of us, you have a fantasy, a vision of what could be, of what you could be. Maybe that dream is selfish, or maybe it’s altruistic, or maybe...it’s extremist. What if there was a family jewel, an exquisite 133-carat pink piece of perfection, a diamond that historically belonged to you, and what if that gem was stolen?

A new entry in the Deception series, Defection, details the kidnapping of Rita Daveed, a.k.a. Harriet. The MSS needs to retrieve an audio SD card that will reveal the identity of Dragonfly, a Chinese sleeper agent embedded high up in Vauxhall Cross. Before Rita is taken on orders from Yang Bo, the director of the UFWD, she manages to leave behind a clue, a postcard from the Bowley Gallery in London, with a cryptic message scrawled on the back, “Find Harry!"

Noir Confidential draws upon the era of filmmaking known as Film Noir. Today, the genre is called Neo-Noir, but the same concepts, tropes, and techniques are used to reflect today's feelings of inevitability, cynicism and defeat. The pessimism, distrust, and greed displayed in classic Film Noir movies like "The Maltese Falcon" and "The Third Man" speak to a society racked by geopolitical conflict and economic disparity. All the elements that sparked the Film Noir heyday have returned to haunt society, and a new class of cynical anti-heroes and manipulative Femme Fatales have arrived to ...

Harry is drawn back into the Quandary orbit when his restaurant partner goes missing, and a dead North Korean RGB agent is found murdered on Benten Island under the torii gate of the Itsukushima Shrine, near Matsumae Castle in Hokkaido, Japan. A Japanese Naicho CIRO agent, a Mossad Kidon agent, and twin brother casino operators join Harry and his Quandary colleagues to unravel the latest attempt by the Chinese and North Koreans to disrupt the financial institutions in the West.

The business of intelligence is often referred to as information gathering. A simple proposition: gather enough data so the politicians can make informed, rational decisions on things like national security, or on whether or not one of the several competing forces in the world is about to go all ballistic on your ass. But the problem is not too little information, but too much.

It all started with a horse race in picturesque Palermo, Sicily, but this wasn’t your typical race with rules designed to protect the horses, jockeys, and bettors; this was a Mafia-sponsored street race, a blood sport free-for-all more suited for the Coliseum than the backstreets of the Sicilian town.

On a chilly November New York City morning in 1953, a scientist working for the CIA on psychotropic mind-control experiments walked off the 10th-floor balcony of the Statler Hotel. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the bizarre and incredibly dangerous work he had been doing in service to national security.

The world is a dangerous place, and every country has men and women tasked to protect it. These people go by many names: Secret agent, intelligence officer, and analyst are just a few. Harry is one such person. He is an analyst. He spends his time reading, researching, and analyzing, followed by writing reports that often never see the light of day. Harry is well educated with a seemingly important job, but Harry is bored. Bored, because analysts never get to be the hero, never get to order cocktails stirred not shaken, and, never, never, get the girl.

Horse trainers Davey and Pauly Cisco are looking for a fresh start in Southern California after wearing out their welcome in their native Australia. The Cisco twins are identical in looks but not personality. Pauly, like most horse trainers, pushes the envelope of acceptable practice, while his look-alike brother rips through regulations with regularity and abandon.

Internet gambling and expansion of casinos beyond the Nevada State Line have put a financial strain on racetracks. Johnny Luck, Hong Mian triad big shot, and Jesse James, his beautiful blonde ex-jockey protege, are always on the lookout for ways to expand the triad's gambling operation. Back in the '50s and '60s, Jai Alai was a big deal in Florida. Gamblers would fill the frontons and drop thousands of dollars betting on Basque athletics competing in a sport that was so dangerous it was referred to as the "Ballet of Bullets", and the game is dodging death.

Rita Daveed, an ex Israeli intelligence officer, becomes the business manager and partner of a Hindu mystic, Baba Bhang, who promotes his somewhat corrupted interpretation of the ancient philosophy of Charvaka: a pursuit of pleasure based on the notion that there are no Gods or afterlife. When Rita and Baba open their American ashram in California wine country, they find themselves in a real estate conflict with the local winery owners and their industrial backers.

On the surface Major William Stone (Retired) is merely a rich English expatriate with now living in Palermo, Argentina, where he runs a small art gallery along with his assistant Margarita Cervantes. If you scratch the surface, you'll find that Stone was recently the chauffeur for the heiress to the Murphy Peanut Butter Company, the largest peanut butter manufacturer in the USA, and owner of numerous expensive thoroughbred racehorses. The problem is, Stone died in the Falkland Islands and the man now assuming his modified identity is disgraced MI6 financial wizard Jacob Conrad.

It’s not what you know that counts; it’s what you need to know. Today analytics rule, and that approach may be just fine for some businesses; but as seemingly rational as number crunching may appear, it only tells you part of the story, and that can be misleading. Statistical analysis can tell you what people did, but it can’t tell you why; and it doesn’t tell you what they would have done if presented with an alternative. Even A-B testing won’t provide the answer to why people did what they did.

Noir I is four stories: "The Gold Cricket", "The Bastard", "Cine City", and "Killer Jazz".