Showing results by author "Ridley Pearson" in All Categories

Sun Valley sheriff Walt Fleming’s budding relationship with local photographer Fiona Kenshaw hits a rough patch after she is responsible for a heroic river rescue yet attempts to avoid the press. Despite her laudable actions, she begs Walt to help keep her photo out of the local paper. Confused by her protests, Walt thinks she’s just being modest about her heroism.

A strange series of fires is raging in Seattle - white-hot fires that burn so cleanly even the ash is consumed, along with all traces of the fires' victims. Brilliant forensic investigator Police Sergeant Lou Boldt is back, battling the mysterious arsonist. He is also keeping his eye on the fire warden, who seems to be a little too close to the heat.

In Seattle, they're calling him The Pied Piper - someone who comes in the night and takes children away. To newly promoted police lieutenant Lou Boldt and police psychologist Daphne Matthews, it's clear this isn't about a single lunatic or random kidnappings: these crimes are well orchestrated, well executed, and, most chilling of all, occurring in cities across the country.

The "blue flu" has struck the Seattle Police Force and the majority of officers are on an unofficial strike. Overworked and understaffed, detective Lou Boldt is committed to remaining on the job no matter what. But when a string of robberies and the brutal near-murder of a female cop descend on the city, the pressure of being a nearly one-man operation threatens Boldt's psyche and his marriage.

Eight years ago, in Sun Valley - snowcapped playground for the wealthy and ambitious - all that stood between New York State attorney general Elizabeth Shaler and a knife-wielding killer was local patrolman Walt Fleming. Now, Liz Shaler returns to Sun Valley as the crown jewel and keynote speaker for billionaire Patrick Cutter's world-famous C3, a media and communications conference where the richest, most powerful business tycoons converge.

In this third installment of Pearson's Sun Valley series, Killer Summer takes us back to the high-stakes world of the wealthy and politically connected - just in time for the area's 17th Annual Wine Auction. The world's most elite wine connoisseurs have descended on Sun Valley to taste and bid on the world's best wines, including three bottles which are said to have been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams.

Years ago, Lou Boldt's wife, Liz, had an extramarital affair with David Hayes, a young computer specialist at the bank where she is an executive. Drained by the overwhelming demands of marriage to a high-profile cop, Liz fell into the temptation of an office fling, which she soon regretted. When Liz ended the relationship, Hayes reacted by engaging in a daring embezzlement scheme. Now, years later, David Hayes is released from prison.

Umberto Alvarez is a grieving man whose quest is to bring down the railroad company he blames for the death of his wife and children three years earlier - no matter who gets in the way. Peter Tyler is an ex-cop looking to redeem himself after being suspended from the force. Now an investigator with the National Transportations Safety Board, he will stop at nothing to catch the elusive Alvarez.

A shipping container washed ashore leads Seattle television news anchor Stevie McNeal and reporter friend Melissa on the trail of a scam involving the importation of illegal aliens. A career stepping-stone for McNeal, the investigation puts her at cross-purposes with the Seattle Police Department's Lou Boldt and Sergeant John LaMoia.

For years FBI agent Cameron Daggett has been on the trail of an international triggerman responsible for planting at least two nearly undetectable explosive devices on airplanes. When a strange murder takes place in a Seattle aircraft training installation, Daggett suspects that his nemesis is involved. The man who was murdered was a specialist in training pilots to fly the Duhning 959-600 - a new breed of ultra-sophisticated aircraft - and he was killed in a Duhning flight simulator.

Grace Chu is an American-educated Chinese national now working as a forensic accountant after serving in the Chinese army as an intelligence officer. John Knox is an American who parlayed his military service during the first Iraqi war into a lucrative import/export business, which now provides him the official access he needs to work freelance undercover operations throughout the world. Both are highly skilled operatives capable of deft subterfuge or extreme violence, if circumstances require.

Seattle police detective Lou Boldt and police psychologist Daphne Matthews return in No Witnesses to confront the most challenging case of their careers. People are dying throughout Seattle - victims of a madman who is placing poisoned food in neighborhood supermarkets. But the criminal is intelligent: He writes the police chilling extortion letters, faxed directly from a laptop computer over public telephone lines, and retrieves his ransom electronically, through ATMs in hundreds of locations.

Private security firm Rutherford Risk’s new client is a philanthropist with a headline-making cause: to locate and shut down an Amsterdam-based sweatshop that uses enslaved girls as forced labor. Enter import/export entrepreneur John Knox, with his former combat experience—and forensic accountant Grace Chu, who can trap and trace even the most sensitive financial information. Working through the picturesque streets and canals of Amsterdam, Knox and Grace face Middle Eastern mobsters, the owner of a local brothel and police officers they don’t trust.

When ex-military contractor John Knox receives a text from partner Grace Chu warning that she fears her cover may have been blown while on assignment, he jumps into action. Knox must locate her overseas handlers, convince them of the threat, and then attempt to retrace the well-hidden steps of a woman who had been attempting to determine how one million euros' worth of AIDS vaccine disappeared, all while eluding angry poachers on a parallel trail.

A troubled Mary Ann Walker takes a nosedive off a bridge. Seattle's police department macho man John LaMoia takes the call, along with the beauteous cop psychologist Daphne Matthews. They suspect her boyfriend, known to beat Mary Ann. Her seething brother, Ferrell, is convinced the boyfriend did the deed. But the case somehow becomes too slippery to close.

Police lieutenant Joe "Dart" Dartelli made one critical mistake in his police career. Three years ago, he chose to ignore a piece of evidence in a suicide case - a suicide that may have possibly been a murder - because the dead man was himself a vicious woman-killer who more than deserved his fate. And the evidence that Dart ignored could have raised difficult questions about his former mentor, the brilliant forensic specialist Walter Zeller. But another suicide victim turns up - the body of a wife-beater - and Zeller has disappeared....

What's it like to see yourself in a picture you never knew was taken? John Knox is an expert at surveillance and delicate, international dealings. So he is understandably thrown when David "Sarge" Dulwich, his contact at Rutherford Risk, hands him a photo of a transaction he recently facilitated in the Middle East. More curious to him, he's shown that photo while in the Red Room, the private security company's highly secure underground bunker, where eavesdropping is impossible and privacy ensured. Why all the cloak-and-dagger?

The "blue flu" has struck the Seattle Police Force and the majority of officers are on an unofficial strike. Overworked and understaffed, detective Lou Boldt is committed to remaining on the job no matter what. But when a string of robberies and the brutal near-murder of a female cop descend on the city, the pressure of being a nearly one-man operation threatens Bodt's psyche and his marriage. With the help of Daphne Matthews and Sergeant John LaMoia, Boldt is able to make slow progress cracking the case and their work leads them to a Denver convict and his brother, a hardened criminal.

Steven "Steel" Trapp has been placed in an East Coast boarding school for gifted kids by his FBI agent father. He soon discovers that there's a clubby element of the faculty and upper classmen that is very secretive and protective. To his surprise, his friend Kaleigh arrives to board at the school and it isn't long before the two realize that this is not your normal boarding school.

Six years ago, witness protection marshal Roland Larson did the unthinkable: he fell in love with a protected witness, Hope Stevens, whose testimony was to put away prominent members of the Romero crime family. When Hope's plan to "cut and run" is interrupted by both the government and the mob, she disappears into a new identity.