William Diehl Books In Order

Martin Vail Books In Publication Order

  1. Primal Fear (1992)
  2. Show Of Evil (1995)
  3. Reign in Hell (1997)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. Sharky’s Machine (1974)
  2. Chameleon (1981)
  3. Hooligans (1984)
  4. Thai Horse (1987)
  5. The Hunt aka 27 (1990)
  6. Eureka (2002)
  7. Seven Ways to Die (2012)

Martin Vail Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

William Diehl Books Overview

Primal Fear

Chicago, 1983: A sainted bishop lies slain, mutilated, and dismembered in his church. Moments after the murder, an angelic looking young man, Aaron Stampler, is found crouched in the confessional, covered in blood and clutching a butcher knife, but swearing his innocence of the heinous act. Enter attorney Martin Vail. Vail is so good at his job, he has managed to infuriate every judge, prosecutor, and politician in Illinois. Now they’re paying him back by appointing him to defend Aaron Stampler and plead a case he cannot possibly win. But Vail is no ordinary lawyer, and the legal team he assembles is no ordinary backup squad. So begins a court battle worthy of Presumed Innocent and a nightmare of terror every bit as horrifying as Silence of the Lambs.

Show Of Evil

It begins with a shocking, unsolved murder. In small town in southern Illinois, the butchered body of Linda Balfour with a cryptic code printed in blood on the back of her head forges a gruesome link to the brutal murder of Bishop Rushman, the beloved Chicago clergyman who had been dismembered years before by the angelic looking altar boy, Aaron Stampler. The same Aaron Stampler whom defense attorney Martin Vail saved from the electric chair…
Now Vail is Chicago’s chief prosecutor, facing the nightmare of his life. If Stampler has been locked away in a high security institution for the past ten years, how could he have killed Linda Balfour? Then another altar boy turns up dead with a similar inscription in blood on the back of his head. If Aaron Stampler isn’t committing these killings, who is? Martin Vail’s career maybe even his life hangs on the answer…

Reign in Hell

William Diehl stunned readers with Primal Fear and Show of Evil, the national bestsellers featuring Chicago lawyer Martin Vail. Now, in his gripping new novel of suspense, Diehl enters uncharted territory, pushing Vail and the legal system he represents to the brink of destruction. The nation is seized by fear. A terrorist attack on a military convoy leaves scores of soldiers dead as truckloads of highly volatile weapons fall into the hands of an ultra right wing militia. A fanatic, snake handling preacher known only as Brother Transgressor joins forces with this radical group, adding fuel to the fire. No one knows who this mysterious figure is or where he came from, but few can resist his ardent convictions or see that his persuasive ways conceal his own dark secrets and sinister agenda. Having just won a landmark conviction, Martin Vail now Illinois attorney general has risen to national prominence. His bravado and cunning reputation catch the attention of the Oval Office. The President demands swift legal action against the militia and turns to Vail, naming him an assistant attorney general of the United States. His job: nail the terrorists in their tracks. Still hungry as ever to make up for the fatal mistakes he made years ago, Vail plunges into his new, near impossible mission, one that soon explodes into a personal nightmare, as his most chilling adversary, Aaron Stampler, returns seemingly from the dead to enact a vengeance that might bring Vail to his knees.

Sharky’s Machine

Italy, 1944: A squad of American soldiers on a dangerous secret mission is ambushed and slaughtered…
and a fortune in gold vanishes. Hong Kong, 1959: An aging American colonel, haunted by his wartime past, is brutally murdered in a luxurious brothel. Atlanta, 1975: The last survivor of the fatal World War II ambush in Italy is executed at point blank range in a parking lot. Blowing away a crazed, gun wielding drug dealer on a crowded city bus gets police detective Sharky bounced from the narc squad into the dreaded dregs of the department vice. That’s where he stumbles on a high priced call girl and her pimp who are fleecing rich johns in an even higher priced blackmail scam. Together with his ‘machine’ of hard bitten vice squad veterans, Sharky closes in for a big sting. He doesn’t count on falling for Domino, his alluring target. Or falling into the middle of the murderous design she’s a part of involving a hot presidential candidate, the shadowy multimillionaire who’s backing him, and the ice cold assassin they’re using to wipe out the past…
before it blows their future to hell.’Every chapter crackles with sex, violence, and corruption.’ The Washington Post’Fast paced, attention holding, hard hitting.’ Chicago Tribune’A slam bang ending that should shock the most jaded thriller reader.’ The Associated Press

Chameleon

‘Explosive, extraordinary…
The reader is left limp!’THE SAN DIEGO UNIONThe deadliest secret assassin to ever roam the globe. Now, crack reporters Frank O’Hara and Eliza Gunn are hot on his trail. To unmask him, they untangle a many colored web of espionage and computer intrigue amid the tantalizing Oriental arts of love and death…
.

Hooligans

Jake Kilmer is a cop for the Feds. His specialty is a branch of the Mafia known as the Cincinnati Triad. He’s pursued them for years, and now they’ve set up shop in Dunetown, Georgia. This time, they will not escape the Hooligans, a tough squad of ex cops that Jake has organized. This time, he’ll settle the score once and for all…
.

Thai Horse

‘It’s enough to make Ludlum seem humdrum.’ATLANTA JOURNAL & CONSTITUTIONChristian Hatcher, the licensed killer they call the Shadow Warrior, is out of jail and looking for the betrayer that got him there. With his body wasted and his spirit nearly crushed, Hatcher returns to Hong Kong and Bangkok deadly stops on the hero*ine pipeline and comes closer to a solution that he fears to discover…
.’Diehl knows how to tell a story, and his novel moves.’THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWFrom the Paperback edition.

The Hunt aka 27

As the world trembles with the approach of World War II, a woman dies at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen. Her murder forever changes her lover, Francis Scott Keegan, a relentless anti Na*zi mercenary, who becomes locked in a desperate cat and mouse game with the Third Reich’s perfect spy, a man of a thousand faces. In an arena that encompas*ses presidents and gangsters, spies and sirens, the deadly present and the dark past, Keegan pursues his elusive quarry into the cutting edge of world events and into the secret inner workings of a terrifying mission known only as ’27.’
‘The best book of its kind since THE DAY OF THE JACKAL…
Edge of the seat stuff.’
PEOPLE

Eureka

Eureka. It’s what you say when you strike gold. It s also a town in California where the truth might be buried forever. In New York Times bestselling author William Diehl s thrilling, accomplished new novel, the seamy past of America s most glamorous state lies in this deceptively peaceful area, one hundred miles north of Los Angeles. It was the lawless place from which young, rugged Thomas Culhane escaped to fight World War I. Now it s a place where, two decades later, police detective Zeke Bannon investigates a death that seems a sad accident. Until you look a bit closer. The year is 1941. Verna Wilensky has been electrocuted in her bathtub, leaving a lower middle class life, no survivors, and a bank account packed with almost a hundred thousand dollars. Mysterious checks have consistently come to her for more than twenty years, most drawn from a bank in San Pietro, a town once known as Eureka. Eureka was a town that used to be a bootlegger s paradise and a gangster s dream. Now it is the rebuilt metropolis where Sheriff Thomas Culhane is launching a bid to be the golden state s next governor. But something just might threaten his ambitions. As Bannon digs deeper into Wilensky s demise, he unearths a decades old secret that starts in a shootout, builds to a bloodbath, and could end up within the upper echelons of California s elite, forever changing the destiny of a state. Rich in historical detail, complex in its connection between past and present, and filled with the nonstop action that are the hallmarks of this modern master, Eureka is an epic achievement of storytelling and suspense William Diehl s most extraordinary novel yet. From the Hardcover edition.

Related Authors

Leave a Comment