Michael Kelly
4 primary works
Book 2
The trail leads to a dead body in an abandoned house on Chicago's North Side and then to places Kelly would rather not go: specifically, City Hall's fabled fifth floor, where the mayor is feeling the heat. Kelly becomes embroiled in a scam that stretches from current politics back to the night Chicago burned to the ground. Along the way, he finds himself framed for murder, before finally facing a killer bent on rewriting history.
Book 3
Kelly is initially drawn into the case by the killers themselves, then tasked by Chicago’s mayor and the FBI to hunt down the bad guys and, all things being equal, put a bullet in them. Kelly, of course, has other ideas. As he gets closer to the truth, his instincts lead him to a retired cop, a shady train company, and an unnerving link to his own past. Meanwhile, Kelly’s girlfriend, Rachel Swenson, becomes a pawn in a much larger game, while a weapon that could kill millions ticks away quietly in the very belly of the city.
The Third Rail is stylish, sophisticated, edge-of-your-seat suspense from a new modern master.
Book 4
A light bulb falls in a subway tunnel, releasing a deadly pathogen.
Within hours, a homeless man, a cop, and then dozens more start to die.
Hospitals become morgues. El trains become rolling hearses.
Chicago is on the verge of chaos before the mayor finally acts, quarantining entire sections of the city. Meanwhile, private investigator and former cop Michael Kelly hunts for the people responsible. The search takes him into the tangled underworld of Chicago’s West Side gangs and cops on the take, and the terrifying world of black biology—an elite field operating covertly at the nation’s top labs, where scientists play God and will do anything necessary to keep their secrets safe.
Book 5
It’s been two years since disgraced Illinois governor Ray Perry disappeared from a federal courthouse in Chicago moments after being sentenced to thirty-seven years in prison on corruption charges. P.I. Michael Kelly is sitting in his office when he gets an anonymous e-mail offering to pay him nearly a quarter of a million dollars if he will find Perry, no questions asked. Kelly’s investigation begins with the woman Ray Perry left behind—his wife, Marie. Ostracized by her former friends and hounded by the feds, Marie tells Kelly she has no idea where her husband is. Like everyone else, Kelly doesn’t believe her. As he hunts for her husband, Kelly begins to unwind Marie Perry’s past. What he finds is a woman who turns out to be even more intriguing than her husband, with her own deeply complicated reasons for standing by him. Everyone in Chicago has secrets, including the governor’s wife. Some of them she shared with her husband. Some of them she kept to herself. And some of them could get Michael Kelly killed.
The Governor’s Wife is a hard-eyed look at the intersection of the political and the personal, at the perils of trusting even those closest to us, and the collateral damage of our highest aspirations. Stylish, knock-out suspense from a modern master.