Richard A Thompson Books In Order

Herman Jackson Mystery Books In Order

  1. Fiddle Game (2012)
  2. Frag Box (2013)
  3. Skin Game (2013)
  4. Lowertown (2013)

Novels

  1. Big Wheat (2011)
  2. Demon in the Hole (2016)

Herman Jackson Mystery Book Covers

Novels Book Covers

Richard A Thompson Books Overview

Fiddle Game

Herman Jackson has chosen St. Paul as his place of permanent exile from Detroit, where his former life as a bookie got too hot to hold. Now he leads a respectable, low profile life as a bail bondsman, selling second chances to losers and looking over his shoulder. When a young woman named Amy Cox leaves Jackson a priceless antique violin as security for her brother’s bail bond, it s really the beginning of an elaborate con game. But the game is barely underway when she is brutally murdered in front of Jackson s office. And for reasons that make no sense, the police are calling him the prime suspect. That is, unless he gives them the violin as evidence. With his criminal past, Jackson can t afford to be a prime suspect for jaywalking. But neither is he prepared to give in to extortion. Soon he is on the road and on the run, trying to solve Amy Cox s murder, pursued by one real and one crooked cop, a band of urban Gypsies who claim to have first rights to the violin, and an unknown killer who also wants Jackson dead. Nobody is who he claims to be, nothing is what it seems, and the violin, which is reputed to carry a 400 year old curse, begins to take on a life of its own. While Jackson tries to sort it all out, the killing continues, and suddenly his old life back in Detroit doesn t look so dangerous at all.

Frag Box

Jackson doesn’t admit he’s from Detroit, much less that he used to run a bookie operation there. His bail bond business in St. Paul was much safer. And if Charlie Victor wasn’t his best client, he was at least a steady one, paying his bonding fee out of a secret stash he called his Frag Box. Then Charlie is beaten to death on a public street in broad daylight. Just as bizarre and unexpected is the fact that he has named Jackson as his sole heir. Jackson wants justice for Charlie, who had become something of a friend. But with plenty of money problems of his own, he also wants the box of cash. Unfortunately, Charlie’s killers want it, too, and the race is on. But every step closer to Charlie’s Frag Box peels away another layer of protection and another set of lies Jackson has told, including the ones he told himself.

Big Wheat

The summer of 1919 is over, and on the high prairie, a small army of men, women, and machines moves across the land, bringing in the wheat harvest. Custom threshers, steam engineers, bindlestiffs, cooks, camp followers, and hobos join the tide. Prosperous farmers proudly proclaim Rain follows the plow, meaning that the bounty of the land will never be exhausted. Everywhere, people gleefully embrace the gospels of progress and greed. The threshing season is on. But there is also an evil upon the land. A killer who calls himself the Windmill Man believes he has a holy calling to water the newly plucked earth with blood. For him, the moving harvest is a target rich environment, an endless supply of ready victims. He has been killing for years now and intends to kill for many more. Who could stop him? Nobody even knew he existed. Until now. A young man named Charlie Krueger also follows the harvest. Jilted by his childhood sweetheart and estranged from his drunkard father, he hopes to find a new life as a steam engineer. But in a newly harvested field in the nearly black Dakota night, he has come upon a strange man digging a grave. And in that moment, he has become the only person who can stop the evil, if he lives long enough. For the killer knows his name and his wanderings, and he, too, is now a target. When next they meet, one of them will have to die.

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