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.
It’s 1984 in West Germany when U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Agent Conrad Vogel gets a routine assignment—a background check on a low-level enlisted soldier. Expecting little to come of it, he soon uncovers the GI’s relationship with a German barmaid—a barmaid who knows much more than she should and people that she shouldn’t, and what appeared to be routine suddenly becomes anything but.
With the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact nations still a potent threat to the Free World, and terrorist bombings and assassinations in full swing against military personnel, Conrad sets out to unravel a web of espionage, betrayal, and murder.
Rumors rising out of the Yucatan jungle report healings and miracles attributed to a holy relic. Father Pablo Diego Corellas discovers that even his own parishioners are making secret pilgrimages to the decrepit plantation where it is held. There, Doña Josefa, a mysterious woman who is either mystic or mad, possesses an artifact that she claims is a fragment of the robe worn by Christ at his trial. Guarded by armed Mayan farmers, she holds sway over an ever-growing number of pilgrims desperate for the healing power of the Purple Robe.
Much against his own wishes, young Father Pablo is dispatched to the interior to investigate, while a police captain and a vacationing American couple make plans of their own for the robe. But when the relic is stolen, they soon discover that miracles have unforeseen consequences and that no one is beyond their reach.
On a gray winter day in 1958, the body of a man washes up on Santa Barbara’s breakwater. He has wounds much like those of the crucified Christ. Trevor Westin, a young writer with deep family connections to the city, sees murder where the local press and powers that be see only a simple case of drowning. Trevor goes on a dangerous search for answers. Along the way he will cross paths with beatniks, beach bums, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Hopper, and agents from the CIA. He will also be introduced to the brave new world of hallucinogenic drugs. Meanwhile, off the coast of Santa Barbara, at the bottom of the sea . . .
Charlotte Wilson is an investigative journalist reporting on a global pandemic that seems to have no identifiable cause. When she is contacted by the COO of a multinational biotech company claiming he has the answer to what’s making people sick, Charlotte and her producer Nick start dreaming of Pulitzers and national syndication.
But as she begins to uncover the truth, Charlotte discovers she is at the center of a conspiracy that is 12 years in the making, one that touches every part of her professional and personal life. Millions of lives depend on her breaking the news, but the story is so big, will anyone believe it? Charlotte may not live long enough to find out.
Steven Booth’s The Orchard is many things – an intriguing mystery, an intense suspense tale, a terrifyingly plausible bio-thriller – but overall it’s just plain great. Pick it up at your own risk. You’ll be in its grip from the first page to the last…and thinking about it long after you put it down.
—Steve Hockensmith, author the Holmes on the Range mysteries and The White Magic Five and Dime
5.0from 1 reader
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<h1 id='c6'><i>Chapter Five</i></h1>
<div>I sat down in the booth in the small café. I wondered how Nick had found this place. It was a fifties-style setup, with pictures of Elvis, Marilyn, and Ike everywhere. There were jukeboxes at the tables, and the booths looked like they were stripped directly from the interior of an old Corvette or Bel Air. I signaled the waitress, who wore a silly pink gingham outfit, a little pink hat, and an intense air of boredom. She also had the requisite facemask and gloves on, to try to stave off WBS. That this restaurant was even open was a bit of a miracle.</div>
<div class='indent'>After slopping coffee into our cups, the waitress wandered off to chat with a coworker, without even stopping to wipe up the splatter.</div>
<div class='indent'>“What’s so damned important that I had to fly thirteen hundred miles to Wisconsin to meet you in this dump? You said it was juicy. Come on, spill it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>He smiled, the big silly grin brightening his stubbly face.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well?” I prompted.</div>
<div class='indent'>“It’s Verigro,” he said, as if that explained everything.</div>
<div class='indent'>I waited. He continued to smile. I opened a creamer and poured it slowly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Aren’t you going to ask me about it?” he asked, the smile falling ever so slightly.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You’re getting to it, I’m sure.” I sipped my coffee. It tasted liked it had been burning for hours.</div>
<div class='indent'>Nick huffed. “You take all the fun out of things, you know that, Lotte?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I decided to take pity on him. “Okay, fine. Gee, Nick,” I said with mock enthusiasm, “what about Verigro?”</div>
<div class='indent'>The smile returned. “There’s something going on. Something big. Peter Youngs wants to talk to you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Who’s that?” I had never heard of him.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Oh, just the Chief Operating Officer.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Hold on!” I said. Nick shushed me and looked around as if CNN was sitting on his shoulder. “Hold on,” I repeated, more softly this time. “The COO? Why the hell would he want to talk to us?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No, not us. He wants to talk to you. Asked for you specifically. Wouldn’t say what it was. I doubt he wants to show you pictures from his last vacation.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sat back in my seat, which made flatulent noises as I shifted. Verigro was the largest biotech firm in the country, maybe the world. It made Monsanto look like a high school chemistry class, and Du Pont look like a baking-soda volcano. If I remembered correctly, Peter Youngs was Verigro’s rising star. He was billed as young, brilliant, and powerful. If he had something to say, and he had to tell it to an investigative reporter from Seattle, it must be one hell of a scandal.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Do we have a meeting?” I asked, keeping my voice almost to a whisper.</div>
<div class='indent'>“About two hours from now. Some restaurant on Third Street. He originally suggested he meet you at Lake Park, but I told him it was too cloak and dagger.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you do a background?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Right here,” he said, handing over his portable. I paged through some basic stuff: Verigro’s history, its current stock price, its board of directors—and I stopped. Errol Foster—the owner of Foster Media Network, in other words, our boss—held a position on their board.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you see this?” I said, turning the portable so that he could look.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah,” he said, nodding. The smile was plastered to his face again.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You know he’s going to go apeshit if he gets a hold of the fact that we are following this story.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If it pans out, it’ll be the biggest scoop in years. He’s got to see that the story is better for the network than whatever he’s got invested in Verigro shares. He’s always been a health food kinda guy. Not exactly a biotech fanatic.” He took a sip of his coffee and lowered his eyes. “Besides,” he said into the cup, “you can always sweet-talk him into running it.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nick,” I said, raising my voice again, “I’ve told you before to drop it. Foster and I haven’t had anything to do with each other in years. I doubt I could sweet-talk him into checking his watch.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>I glowered at him, then went back to paging through Nick’s research. Verigro began as a participant in the Human Genome Project back in the 1990s. Fifteen years ago, they pioneered the technology for selective codon sequencing of DNA, which allowed them to write codons to order. They could now insert foreign genes precisely into the DNA sequence of nearly any organism and do it cheaply. If it came down to it, they could rewrite the entire genome of an organism from the files they had in their database. I kept waiting for them to start programming Tyrannosaurs, but that wasn’t the business they were in. They made transgenic foods—mostly crops, but some transgenic animals as well—economical and safe, with little chance of replicative fading. Verigro’s flagship product was BioStar, a gene from some unpronounceable thermophilic deep-sea bacteria which programs crops to stay fresh without refrigeration and maintain the nutritional value of foods after cooking. BioStar was hailed as a miracle, especially in third world counties. No more famine. Verigro was the hero of the biotech world.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You think it’s about BioStar?” I asked. The waitress approached to refill our coffee cups, and Nick leaned back in the booth as nonchalantly as he could muster.</div>
<div class='indent'>Once the waitress had retreated behind the counter, Nick moved forward again, conspiratorially. “Yeah, I do,” he said simply.</div>
<div class='indent'>I looked at him for a moment, trying to remember. “Isn’t their CEO running for Senate?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah, Jackie Hughes is the front-runner, and is supposed to win in a landslide.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“If we run this story, it will destroy Hughes’s political career.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yep,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Fuck,” I said quietly. If there was something wrong with BioStar, then this really was a Pulitzer waiting to happen.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I know the feeling,” Nick said.</div>
<div class='indent'>“The meeting’s in two hours you said?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Yeah. Macchione’s Italian Garden. Just you two.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“But you got us a truck, right? In case he wants to talk on the record?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“No. No truck. We’re flying under the radar on this one.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“What do you mean, no truck? Didn’t you get this cleared with Jared?” Jared was our news director in Seattle.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Nope. I wanted to see what we had before I stuck our necks out. There is a small but real chance that Youngs just wants to air some corporate dirty laundry.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“You unmitigated ass,” I said, and I meant it. “Your plan was to get the story, then have me use my feminine wiles to persuade Foster to run a piece that could possibly cost him several million dollars in stock? Is that about right?”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Well, when you put it that way…” he trailed off.</div>
<div class='indent'>“You have to tell Jared. Call him right now!” I commanded.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Look, Lotte. I’m the producer. This is my call. If we screw up, it will be my ass, not yours. You have to trust me, okay?”</div>
<div class='indent'>I sighed. I seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “I do trust you, Nick. But this is crazy, even for you.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, the smile returning.</div>
<div class='indent'>“Did you at least get me a hotel room? I’ll need to freshen up before I meet with Youngs.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“Next door.” I looked out the window to see a large, modern-looking hotel. “Parking’s underground. The key is waiting at the front desk. I brought you a suit. It’s in your room.”</div>
<div class='indent'>“At least you did something right,” I grumbled.</div>
<div class='indent'>“I heard that,” Nick said sweetly.</div>
<div class='indent'>I headed for my car with visions of a shower and a quick nap in my future.</div>
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Up-and-coming Amsterdam lawyer David Driessen thinks he’s hit the jackpot when a wealthy client showers him with praise, glamour, and plenty of money. But David learns far too late that every gift from the shady realtor comes with a catch—and a price tag. As his gambling addiction, his constant need for cash, and his wife’s infidelities combine to drag him deeper and deeper into his client’s twisted world of money and despair, David struggles to stay ahead of it all… before his time runs out.
In The Amsterdam Lawyer, René Appel—two-time winner of the Golden Noose, the Netherlands’ equivalent of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award—once again demonstrates the skill that led leading Dutch daily newspaper Algemeen Dagblad to proclaim him “the godfather of the Dutch psychological thriller.”
“A fascinating novel, bubbling over with greed, mistrust, and ruthlessness.” Gijs Korevaar, Algemeen Dagblad
"René Appel is a first-rate Dutch crime writer. The Amsterdam Lawyer is a compelling and twisted legal thriller, the first of what will hopefully be many of his books to appear in English." Steve Steinbock, reviewer for Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
The Amsterdam Lawyer is translated from the Dutch by Josh Pachter.
Dr. Duncan Bright treats patients who invent lovers, struggle with addiction, and constantly challenge and berate him. His dedication to guiding his clients through the turmoil of life is tested when he meets teenagers Dawn and Zander—their escalating violence and erratic behavior become his greatest challenge.
When a body is found in Central Park, Dawn and Zander are the prime suspects, and the police come to the psychologist for his insight. As he is drawn deeper into the investigation, his professional and personal lives become jeopardized.
Dawn’s Web, a gritty, page-turning psychological thriller, explores the twisted minds of Dr. Bright’s patients, the motives of murderers, and his own flawed intentions.
They cannot have the life they planned. She will not let him have another.
Three days after marrying Olympic sharpshooter Angel Meade, forensic expert Ridge Warner has annulled the marriage, attended her funeral, and discovered that the empty casket was only the beginning.
Angel is alive, armed, and determined to erase every person connected to the truth that destroyed their future. Her attacks leave Ridge’s home in ruins, his allies exposed, and the woman he loves marked for death. Each failed attempt only sharpens Angel’s resolve. She does not merely want Ridge dead. She wants control of the ending.
Ridge knows how to read a crime scene, anticipate an attack, and turn almost anything into a weapon. But Angel has built her campaign on false deaths, manufactured evidence, and carefully staged realities. To keep another victim alive, Ridge must give her a lie convincing enough to believe.
Now hunter and target are each acting on a version of events created by the other, and the next mistake may decide whose story survives.
