Showing results by author "Blake Banner" in All Categories

It seems to be a kiss and tell season thanks to black ops whistleblowers and journalists willing to come out and tell their stories, lured by the promise of fortunes to be made from book sales and media celebrity. But this time, it’s a little different.

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.

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.

Sebastian Acosta has been gunned down at three a.m. on a Saturday morning, sitting behind the wheel of a beaten-up Toyota. The passenger door is open, and a few paces away, his pal Luis Irizarry lies with his life ebbing away through two gunshot wounds in his chest. It should be a red-hot case, except that 15 years earlier, Rosario Rojas was raped and strangled in that same house, the house Luis was crawling toward, the house that belonged to Angela Rojas, Rosario’s daughter. Rosario, who was like a sister to Marta Flores, Detective Dehan’s mother.

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….

Harry Bauer has been kicked out of the military, the only job he's ever loved. Now he’s back in New York, and unemployed—until Russian Mafia boss Peter Rusanov offers him a job wiping out the Albanian Mafia. It’s a job he figures could make him rich, until Colonel Jane Harris shows up, takes him for a ride to Pleasantville, and tells him about Cobra. Then all hell breaks loose.

Dave Thorndike, an investigative reporter on the New York Telegraph, is in the habit of disappearing for weeks at a time. So when he vanishes in the winter of 2008, investigating the story of his life, nobody worries—until he shows up shot in the head with his own 9mm—no laptop and no story. It wasn’t much to go on in 2008, but when Stone and Dehan pick it up 10 years later, the case is as cold as the icy winds blowing off the East River. Both his wife and his mistress had motive, but the killing has all the hallmarks of an execution.

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.

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.

Why was Dr. Robert Magnusson murdered? More to the point, why was he murdered 500 miles from anywhere, in the frozen wilderness of Greenland? And then there is the question of what he was doing 70 miles north of the UCLA base camp, where he should have been—and what were the instruments he had secretly set up and housed in the shack out there?

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?

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 take 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.

Nobody has ever heard of ODIN. ODIN is about as secret as a government agency can get. Because within ODIN there is General Operations, which speaks for itself; ODIN 5i, which deals with intelligence gathering; and then there is ODIN 1i, which deals in operations so sensitive not even the CIA can touch them. All three are run with an iron first by The Chief, a giant with a gigantic IQ. His top agent is Alex Mason. But when an ODIN 5i agent based at the US Embassy in Manila goes missing and his encrypted laptop disappears with him, the whole ODIN structure is put in peril.

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.

Detective John Stone of the NYPD has the best arrest record in the 43rd precinct. But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file–the cases nobody gives a damn about.

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.

There is nothing unusual about a young Catholic girl from the Bronx winding up raped, beaten, strangled, and decapitated—unless she winds up that way in Lefthand Canyon, in the Colorado Rockies, where there hasn’t been a murder since 1922. Then it’s unusual enough to become a problem for the sheriff of Lee County. And when he finds no blood at the scene and no physical evidence, it becomes more than a problem. It becomes a headache—for five long years. That’s when he bats it back to the Bronx, to the 43rd precinct, and right onto Detectives Stone and Dehan’s desk.

Helen Troy is in the race to become the first Female President of the United States. She is pretty, feminine, assertive and a guy’s guy kind of girl, who smokes cigars and drinks whisky with the best of’em. Everybody loves her; but nobody has heard of her till now and she has an uphill fight against some experienced heavy hitters. But that’s not her biggest problem.

Lilith Jones was a statistical anomaly. Her mother found her face down on the frozen sidewalk by the light of the single streetlamp on Pugsley Avenue, with her neighbor’s scissors stuck in her back. The scissors belonged to her neighbor, and so did all the fingerprints on them. Her neighbor, Pat Perkins, hated Lilith. She hated her because her own husband, her brother, and her daughter all loved Lilith. Lilith was charming, beautiful, smart, and adorable.

USA Today and Amazon two million copy best-selling author Blake Banner is at his best in this mystifying crime series! And so is the Castle Hill Ripper. His MO hasn’t changed. He still stalks pregnant women like a hunter.