Michael Barson recently interviewed author Michael Brandman for Bookreporter.com. They talked about the Buddy Steel novels and Brandman’s Buddy Steel e-book short story, “Stealth”. You can find the interview here. https://bit.ly/2Cmu1Yf
Michael Brandman is the author of three Jesse Stone novels, each based on characters created by Robert B. Parker, all on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
With his longtime partner, Tom Selleck, he produced and co-wrote nine Jesse Stone movies and three Westerns.
His and Emanuel Azenberg’s production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead won the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion Award for Best Picture.
He has produced more than forty motion pictures including films written by Arthur Miller, Stephen Sondheim, Neil Simon, David Mamet, Horton Foote, Wendy Wasserstein; David Hare, and Athol Fugard.
He is the father of two sons and lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the actress Joanna Miles.
You can find Brandman’s Buddy Steel books in the Web Store. https://bit.ly/3jhrhvE
Wild Card is the most recent book in the series.
“…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.
*****
Or, if you want to start at the beginning of the series, you can pre-order a copy of Missing Persons. The first book will be re-released in September. (It’s not that far away.)
Even in a town called Freedom, justice has its price
LAPD homicide detective Buddy Steel finds himself detoured from his own life when his ailing father, Sheriff Burton Steel, calls him home to Freedom to take over as deputy. Though relations between father and son have always been strained, Buddy reluctantly agrees to the arrangement.
When he begins investigating the possible disappearance of a famous local televangelist’s wife, he is met with outright antagonism. While the highly-secured husband insists that his wife is simply visiting a relative, the housekeeper who reported her missing fears she may have been murdered. And no one, from family members to ministry security and staff to the prosecutor’s office seems inclined to help Buddy in his investigation. In fact, many go out of their way to stop him.
But the more he pokes and prods, the more he realizes that the Bible-thumping family and their television empire may be an elaborate cover for a less-than-holy enterprise. But how far up does the corruption reach—and will Buddy pay the ultimate price for refusing to look the other way?