Bøger af Earl Emerson

Four successful businessmen want Thomas Black to track down the four women they've had secret crushes on for years and set up "dream dates" with them. But Black, on the trail of the first dreamgirl, finds a woman battered into a coma instead. And then a double murder and the disappearance of another dreamgirl make Black realize how quickly dreams can turn into deadly nightmares . . .

Tasked with the embarrassing job of finding a lost dog at the behest of an elderly family friend, PI Thomas Black's quest for the dog quickly shifts into something dark and deadly when he learns the dog fled the scene of a double-murder/suicide. There's something disquieting about the crime, as well as the hasty police dismissal of it. What's worse, several weeks earlier, Black met two of the deceased, who told him they thought they were being followed. He assured them their paranoia was unjustified. Now he's wondering how he could have been so wrong. As Black and his companion, Elmer (Snake) Slezak, work to unravel the crime, they uncover a convoluted trail leading back to the household of the wealthy centenarian who hired them to find the dog. Black soon uncovers a bizarre gambling ring in which wealthy young sociopaths wager huge sums on their ability to destroy ordinary lives for kicks. Complicating matters, a substantial reward for the dog has brought a gang of ne'er-do-wells out of the woodwork, one of whom is linked to gunmen from California as well as to the household of Black's client. The case comes to a boil when the gunmen try to throw Snake off a cliff in Seattle's Discovery Park . . . and the bodies begin to pile up.

From the terror of a lightless, smoke-clogged building to the secrets kept by the men and women who trust their partners with their lives, Earl Emerson knows the world of firefighting like no other author-and writes about it with passion and piercing honesty. In his remarkable new thriller, Emerson fuses together a gripping drama with unforgettable scenes of peril that, in this realm, can explode at any second. Jason Gun, a risk-taking rookie firefighter who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, has found in his firehouse the family he never had as a child. Then, in one ill-fated turn of events, it all begins to go wrong. A bizarre accident brings a thrill-seeking woman into Engine Company 29-and into Jason's life. Suddenly, his future on the job is at risk. Two fellow firefighters know that he missed a call because of some sexual heroics at the wrong time and place. Now, deeply in their debt, he will find out what kind of men his partners really are. When these two firefighters come upon a fortune in missing bearer bonds-money found in a dead man's house-Jason is forced to become an accessory to their crime. And when evidence of their greed, foolishness, and thievery begins to emerge, Jason is witness to an even darker deed. Suddenly, the twenty-four-year-old, who only wanted to do the right thing, is trapped behind a wall of silence. Trying to undo his mistake, Jason moves further into the darkness, where a beautiful young woman might just be his emotional rescue-or yet one more very wrong move. Unfortunately for Jason, the worst isn't behind him. Like a fire hit by wind, the killing has raged out of control. Capturing the thin line that separates a hero from a criminal, and an enemy from a friend, Earl Emerson's new novel is a gripping tale of a man's dangerous fall from grace-and of his fierce battle for redemption.

The bomb that nearly killed Thomas Black went off in a school gymnasium after a Senate candidate had spoken. Amid the carnage, Black enters a tunnel of dreams and hallucinations, oblivion and unconnected memories. People come and go in his hospital room. A woman kisses him. A madman's rant echoes in his mind. When Black is released from the hospital, he faces the twin tragedies that have devastated his life, and the fact that his lovely wife, Kathy, is really gone for good. Or is she? Thomas believes he sees Kathy---as a passenger in a passing truck. Her cell phone, which should be on the bottom of the sea, calls his in the middle of the night. And the explanations investigators give for the plane crash just don't make sense. Now, step by step, Black is beginning to understand what a paranoid, alcoholic former CIA hit man has been trying to tell him about the plane crash, about the death of a reporter's husband, about suspicious things nobody ever gets around to questioning. Suddenly Black is caught up in a web of personal and political lies and something even worse: a plot that is killing everyone it touches.

In the freezing heart of the Pacific Northwest winter, a group of firefighters from North Bend Fire and Rescue responds to a freeway accident. Two trucks have collided on the icy pavement. One of the trucks was transporting livestock; the other carried within its cargo an unmarked, innocuous-looking container. Now the highway is chaos with irate drivers, volunteer fire crews, and hundreds of escaped chickens. The trucks are cleared, the highway reopens, and another day ends. But the repercussions of the crash are enormous. For six months later, the firefighters who were at the scene begin to mysteriously succumb to unexplained accidents and ailments. Jim Swope wakes up with the first, strange symptom-a symptom of an unknown disease that renders its victims brain-dead within a week. Now he has only seven days to determine how he and his fellow firefighters have been poisoned-and to discover an antidote . . . if one exists. If he doesn't, these will be the last seven days of his life. In a red-hot pursuit to the end, Earl Emerson puts real-life heroes up against seemingly insurmountable odds. Intense in the third degree, Into the Inferno is a brilliant melding of fact and thriller. Prepare yourself for the sweltering heat of wickedly good suspense.

In the thirteenth installment of this award-winning private eye series, Seattle sleuth Thomas Black agrees to do a favor for a longtime friend of Kathy's, Angela Bassman, who quickly gets him entangled in a messy relationship between philandering billionaire, Clark Lloyd Self and his famous ex-model wife, Monica Pennington. Complications ensue when Self's gargantuan Rhodes-scholar bodyguard and his sniggering buddy begin harassing Black and Angela. When Angela ends up dead, her sister hires Black to investigate her last weeks, sending Black on a Byzantine odyssey in which he nearly loses his life and ends up discovering more about each sister's mysterious past than either of them ever wanted him to know.

In his 15th appearance in the multi-award winning Thomas Black mystery series, Thomas is ambushed by unknown assailants on a Washington State ferry, pitched overboard and left for dead in Puget Sound. Thomas suspects the attack may be linked to the police brutality suit he's investigating for his attorney wife, Kathy. After he is rescued from the sound, things heat up when Thomas stumbles upon a mummy as a consequence of tailing a local businessman with ties to the mayor's office. At first the mummy seems unrelated to his work or the attack on him, but the corpse is gradually linked to several players in the case, including, oddly enough, Kathy's client. As Thomas continues to investigate, he begins to unravel a conspiracy of murder and racial animus dating back almost two decades.