Chris Westphal (5)

Hollywood, 1982. Struggling sitcom writer Tom Huttle has the ideal side gig: writing personality profiles for an insurance company’s newsletter. If only he knew that the company is a CIA front. When a CIA agent is murdered, Tom is the key suspect—at least in the eyes of bumbling FBI Special Agent Terrance Tillberry. If Terrance weren’t hopelessly in love with undercover KGB agent Petra Tarasova, maybe he would see that Tom has no idea what’s going on. But this is Hollywood. Nothing is really what it seems.

It’s the early 1990s, and Tom Huttle has abandoned film and television writing for a more stable, although far less glamorous, career as a business writer. When he finally sells his first book—Garbage—he believes that wealth and celebrity are just around the corner. With his wife and son, he moves to tiny, isolated Echo Valley. The place seems ideal, until Tom learns that life there is dominated by Bagnoosianism, a crackpot religion presided over by the enigmatic Swami Bagnoose. Tom’s wife soon succumbs to the cult’s allure, while his fragile son falls under the spell of a shifty conman from long ago in Tom’s life. Meanwhile, Tom’s agent makes increasingly bizarre demands for the book, and Tom nurtures a maniacal fondness for pink lemonade. And then things began to get weird. In Huttle We Trust is book two in the Chronicles of Huttle. 

The Emperor of Japan is a pyromaniac, living in the orange groves of Echo Valley as he plots revenge against Tom Huttle, who he believes has ruined his life. Meanwhile, Tom is in Baltimore to collect a writing award, while his wife and her bawdy traveling companion have been kidnapped by terrorists in Cairo. It’s up to Tom to save the day. The third book in The Chronicles of Huttle is an intricately constructed black comedy that skewers everything from post-Cold War paranoia to sexual taboos to our fascination with youth, beauty, and celebrity. Huttle to the Rescue is book three in the Chronicles of Huttle.

Where the spy novel and novelist intertwine After decades of writing utilitarian copy for trade magazines, Tom Huttle believes that he is on the path to a glamorous new life when he completes the first chapter of his novel, The Pyongyang Paradox, featuring dashing hero Buck Samson. The novel might give Tom the confidence he needs to pursue the woman of his dreams, and fulfill his abiding conviction that he is destined for a life of action and romance. Tom gets more excitement than he bargained for when the explosion of a top-secret satellite sends him to Buck Samson’s fictional world, just as Buck takes over Tom’s pedestrian life. For Tom, living a life of relentless peril and intrigue is a far cry from writing about it, and Tom’s normal world may not be ready for the likes of Buck Samson. A rollicking blend of espionage, romance, and science fiction, The Pyongyang Paradox is laced throughout with Chris Westphal’s quirky brand of dark humor and psychological insight.

As editor of the Empire City Dispatch—a struggling twice-weekly newspaper in coastal Oregon—former investigative journalist Jack Teller thinks he’s found refuge from his traumatic past, until he discovers the body of the outcast scion of the region’s most powerful family, Jesse McLennon. Tragic events closer to home force Teller to delve more deeply into Jesse’s life and death. Teller quickly finds himself in conflict with the McLennons, who will stop at nothing to maintain their positions of power and respect. Dark and brooding, Deadlines evokes the mist-shrouded Oregon Coast as Jack Teller is drawn into a plot of deception and revenge, and reckons with his own troubled past.