Buddy Steel Thrillers
2 primary works • 3 total works
Book 4
"The perfect substitute for that good-time trip to California you've decided not to take after all."
—Kirkus Reviews
A new breed of brazen criminal forces Buddy Steel into unfamiliar territory. Will he outsmart the ingenious thieves before they get the best of him?
Buddy Steel, acting Sheriff of Freedom, California, is enjoying some well-deserved R&R at a friend's mountain hideaway when he's called home to investigate a home invasion—at his father's address. The break-in is just one in a series, perpetrated by ingeniously inventive burglars. To complicate matters, Buddy must also investigate a spate of cyber crimes targeting local businesses and individuals—an area well outside of his experience and comfort zone.
Already on the trail of the cybercriminals is LAPD Gang Enforcement's foremost computer geek, Detective Quinn Anthony. Buddy teams up with the unconventional—and much younger—brainiac to trace the convoluted trail of the hackers. From the adjunct of a vicious LA-based cartel to outside of U.S. borders, Buddy and Quinn race to take down the hackers and recover the spoils. The closer they get, the more danger they face; and the more danger they face, the closer they become...
Fans of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch have a new detective series to fall in love with from Michael Brandman—Hollywood screenwriter and contributing New York Times bestselling author in the Robert B. Parker Jessie Stone series.
Also by Michael Brandman:
The Buddy Steel Thrillers:
Missing Persons, book 1
One on One, book 2
Wild Card, book 3
The Jesse Stone Novels:
Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice
Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues
Robert B. Parker's Damned if You Do
Book 5
Buddy Steel's maverick behavior as a police officer has won his commander's respect and a promotion to LAPD homicide detective. Almost immediately, he is asked to join a task force working to bust a major meth shipment to LA from Mexico. One of the two undercover agents on the case has gotten himself killed by the Mexican cartel but not before spilling that a female agent is deeply enmeshed within their organization. The agent in question-Kara Machado-barely learns that her true identity may soon be exposed to the cartel when she is whisked abruptly to their family compound in Mexico, cut off from any communication with the outside world.
But Buddy has personal history with Kara, and he's determined to bring her home safely. Enlisting the aid of three friends from his military days and working through back channels, Buddy launches an off-the-books foreign invasion to find not only Kara but also the storage location of the drugs bound for LA. With the odds and time against them, Buddy and his team know it will take a miracle to accomplish either objective-and another to get them all out alive.
"...another irreverent, complex lawman." —Library Journal
Follow Buddy Steel on his most difficult and dangerous investigation yet as he stumbles upon corruption in his own backyard.
When San Remo County Acting Sheriff Buddy Steel is deputized by the California Coastal Commission to investigate a reclusive Russian billionaire who has repeatedly violated state law by obstructing public access to his vast beachfront property, he makes a shocking discovery. And learns that the politicos, some with a history of corruption, some just chicken, will not back up enforcement.
This makes Buddy, a former LAPD cop dragged home by his Sheriff father's ALS diagnosis to "temporarily" head the department, dig in his heels and face down the Russian's imported goon squad. It can and will get uglier.
At the same time a string of random murders in the county's normally sleepy town of Freedom, a wealthy enclave up the coast from Los Angeles, places the Sheriff's Department on high alert as it seeks to apprehend a serial killer whose crimes are so perfectly executed they leave no forensic evidence.
Buddy enlists an old adversary in his war with the Russian. She's a legal shark from L.A., a savvy negotiator—and former lover. He needs to carry this fight to court. And he needs more backup—from the Sheriff's Department staff, not the Sheriff, who resists being sidelined. Nor Freedom's mayor, Buddy's stepmother.
Unconventional and meticulously obtuse in his methodology, wild card cynic Buddy Steel barrels his way through the myriad obstacles that defy him. He may not want the job but his quest for serving the law is relentless.
Wild Card is the third in the Buddy Steel series by Hollywood ace Michael Brandman who, among his other credits, has both written New York Times bestsellers in the Robert B. Parker Jesse Stone series and brought Jesse to the screen in nine films starring Tom Selleck.