Don Bentley was guest host for The Poisoned Pen, welcoming Bill Schweigart and M.P. Woodward to the bookstore. Schweigart’s The Guilty One is the current Hot Book of the Week. There are signed copies of his book, and Woodward’s Dead Drop, available in the Webstore. https://store.poisonedpen.com/
Here’s the description of The Guilty One.
A hero cop thwarts a brutal murder and can’t remember a thing about it. But memories return—and so do the nightmares in this breathlessly paced thriller for fans of David Ricciardi and Michael Connelly.
Every town needs a hero—and Detective Cal Farrell fits the bill. He stopped an active shooter six months earlier, and now he’s become the darling of the Alexandria press. The problem is that Cal remembers nothing from that day. He’s working with a psychiatrist to recover his memories, but hasn’t had much luck.
Then, on one of his morning runs, he is once again the first on scene for a grisly discovery—a body hanging impossibly high on a tree. Soon there’s another victim, killed by a blade and dumped in a ravine. As the bodies begin to stack up, each staged more gruesomely than the last, Cal sees a baroque pattern to the crimes that no one else seems to understand—something out of legend.
As Alexandria dubs the serial killer “Old Town Jack,” Cal learns that the only thing a city loves more than creating a hero is tearing one down. And if he can’t get to the truth, this hometown hero might just be next in line for destruction.
Bill Schweigart is the author of The Fatal Folklore Trilogy, Running Light, and Slipping The Cable. Bill is a former Coast Guard officer and daylights as a branch chief with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). He currently lives in Arlington, VA with his wife and daughter, who along with their monstrous Newfoundland and four cats, provide him with all the adventure he can handle.
Here’s M.P. Woodward’s Dead Drop.
International nuclear negotiations turns allies into enemies in this electrifying thriller from the author of The Handler.
Nuclear negotiations between the United States and Iran have reached a crisis point. The new American administration is determined to move ahead, but there are several stumbling blocks, not the least of which is Lieutenant Colonel Kasem Khalidi, the Iranian intelligence officer the CIA has hidden away in one of its safe houses.
As always, John and Meredith Dale are caught in the middle. Mossad—the Israeli intelligence agency—wants Meredith’s help to find the lead Iranian rocket scientist; while John is in a desperate race to keep Kasem one step ahead of an Iranian hit squad.
They are pawns in an international chess game, and any player knows you cannot capture the king without sacrificing some pawns.
MP Woodwardis a veteran of both US intelligence ops and the entertainment industry. As a naval intelligence officer with the US Pacific Command, he scripted scenario moves and countermoves for US war game exercises in the Middle East. In multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf and Far East, he worked alongside US Special Forces, CIA, and NSA. Most recently, Woodward led international distribution for Amazon Prime Video and launched Amazon original content in more than forty countries. To learn more, please visit www.mpwoodward.com.
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