P T Deutermann Books In Order

The Cat Dancers

When two lowlifes rob a gas station, murder the attendant, and then incinerate bystanders who are filling up their minivan, the Manceford County, North Carolina, police quickly arrest the killers at a nearby motel.

But a stubborn judge throws out the case because the suspects were not read their rights, leaving Sheriff Bobby Lee Baggett and Lieutenant Cam Richter to face the anger of the victims families. Soon thereafter, a mysterious e mail arrives in the department: a link to a video of one of the murderers being executed in a homemade electric chair, ending with a voice announcing, That’s one. The shocking video spreads throughout the Internet, drawing the attention of local, state, and federal authorities and national media, and putting intense pressure on Bobby Lee and Cam to find the vigilante before he claims his second victim.

Assigned to head the search, Cam finds himself resented by some of his fellow officers and subtly threatened by others. His job is further complicated by the fact that the offending judge is also his ex wife and now after years apart, and an uneasy reconciliation his sometime lover. Cam s questions lead him to a remote mountain area in western North Carolina and a group of daredevils who call themselves The Cat Dancers so named because they have tracked the last wild mountain lions in the region to their dens, where they have photographed the animals face to face, or died trying. Cam must hunt this group and the cats they seek, or become their next target.

Spider Mountain

A huge dog came out of the woods from our right and lunged at my face. I ducked the snapping jaws by throwing myself backward hard enough to crack my head on the ground. The dog went over my head, landing in a heap, but then whirled around…


Summoned by a friend, ex-cop Cam Richter agrees to do a favor: investigate the assault of a young woman in a remote area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Cam knows the misty hills and shadowed hollers of the park, and his outdoor skills might break a case that local cops can’t—or maybe don’t want to—solve.
Cam has no idea how dangerous his search will become, because in this part of Appalachia, matriarch Grinny Creigh and her extended family destroy those who intrude into their web. The Creighs control the crystal meth trade and own just about everything and everyone in their neck of the woods. But they also operate a much worse enterprise, a dark secret that terrifies any children unfortunate enough to come within their grasp.
Blocked by a menacing sheriff with ties to the family, Cam is shut down and sent away, no wiser about why the young woman was attacked and what she saw. He returns, stealthily stalking the Creighs and their secrets, moving ever closer to Grinny’s mountain house and what it might conceal…
not knowing that his presence on her web has been detected, and that the Creighs are hunting him with creatures bred for that purpose and starved into relentless fury.
Spider Mountain features nonstop action, frightening night pursuits through deep wilderness, and a shocking finale—a masterful novel of suspense by the author of The Cat Dancers.

The Moonpool

I remembered it from high school chemistry, one of those experiments where we made hydrogen. It was more of an acidic sensation on the palate than a real smell, but I recognized it. The pile of spent fuel at the bottom was beginning to outgas. Next would come the fire to end all fires…
.

A private detective working in Wilmington, North Carolina, is found dead in a gas station restroom, apparently poisoned. But when her body sets off radiation alarms in the pathologist’s office, suspicion falls on the nearby Helios nuclear power plant, a heavily guarded facility with supposedly failsafe procedures.

As the FBI, local police, and the power plant s own security team investigate, ex cop Cam Richter, head of the agency that employed the dead woman, begins his own inquiries. What was his detective investigating? And how could one person be poisoned by radiation without others being exposed?

Cam soon finds himself up against powerful forces that will stop at nothing to keep the plant s problems secret. The most vulnerable part of Helios is its moonpool the radioactive storage pond that cools spent but volatile reactor fuel and must be kept completely full. Racing against time, Cam discovers an inside threat, which will use the plant s own systems to begin an unstoppable, disastrous sequence of events.

The Moonpool is a terrific thrill ride, filled with insider details about the ultimate terrorist threat and how it might unfold.

Nightwalkers

Cam Richter, needing a break from his too eventful detective career, is in search of more peaceful pastures in the North Carolina countryside. He buys a seven hundred acre antebellum plantation, the perfect location for restful solitude, but it doesn t take long for him to discover that his new locale is not as quiet as he d hoped.

Almost immediately, Cam finds himself caught up in mischievous pranks around his land, the site of a Civil War era massacre. When the pranks turn hostile, however, he realizes he’s been targeted by a killer who holds him responsible for something Cam is pretty sure he never did. As he tries to find out why someone wants him dead, he begins to uncover the secrets of his plantation and how the land s tragic history is still tangled up in the present.

Cam will need all of his resources, including his redoubtable German shepherd companions, to stay alive as he deals with a determined stalker, some very eccentric people, and all the entanglements of a place suddenly alive with secrets and the fruits of a bloody past.

Pacific Glory

Marsh Vincent, Mick McCarty, and Tommy Lewis were inseparable friends during their naval academy years, each man in love with the beautiful, unattainable Glory Hawthorne. Only Tommy wins her heart and marries Glory after graduation. Different skills set the three men on separate paths in the Navy, but they are all forever changed by the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941. Glory, now Tommy’s widow, is a tough Navy nurse still grieving her loss while trying to save lives at the Pearl Harbor naval hospital. Marsh, a surface ship officer, finds himself in the thick of terrifying sea combat from Guadalcanal, through the turning point at Midway, to a climactic showdown with the Japanese fleet at Leyte Gulf. Mick, a hotshot fighter pilot with a drinking problem and a chip on his shoulder, seeks redemption after a series of failures leaves him grounded and ashamed. Filled with wide-screen action, romance, and heroism tinged with the brutal reality of war, Pacific Glory is an old-fashioned military adventure of the first order. Praise for Pacific Glory ‘Epic, eloquent, stirring…
a war novel that is both sweeping and intensely personal.’ -Library Journal starred review ‘Pacific Glory is a tale brilliantly told for anyone who loves history or an adventure in the spirit of Patrick O’Brian. Deutermann’s eye for capturing the romance, valor, and sacrifice of life at sea is unforgettable. From the first pages, as Deutermann reels you in, you are hooked, drawn into the past and finally delivered back to the future, a journey taken with unforgettable characters.’ -Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of Horse Soldiers and In Harm’s Way ‘Authentic down to the last riveting detail, Pacific Glory will mesmerize anyone who wants to relive the U.S. Navy’s war with Japan – while a mysterious love story about three Annapolis men in love with the same exotic woman winds through the bomb blasts and salvos.’ -Thomas Fleming, New York Times bestselling author of Time and Tide

Scorpion in the Sea

On a calm night off the Florida coast, a fishing boat vanishes without a trace. Something deadly is hiding in U.S. waters, and the Navy brass would rather bury the truth than face it. It’s Montgomery’s war now. Brash and unconventional, Mike Montgomery is hardly regulation Navy. At his side, Diane Martinson, the Chief of Staff’s wife smart, tough…
and his lover. Under his command, the USS Goldsborough a WWII era destroyer thundering toward a showdown of water and fire. With the arrival of P.T. Deutermann retired Navy captain, former arms control negotiator within the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ex commander of at destroyer squadron today’s naval thriller just climbed to a whole new level.

The Edge of Honor

A man on the brink of destiny…
It is the height of the Vietnam War and young Lt. Brian Holcomb is about to embark on an eight month tour of duty that will bring him one step away from commanding his own ship.A woman tempted by desire…
On the homefront, his beautiful wife Maddy is lonely and confused tantalized by a seductive stranger and an act of betrayal every Navy man dreads, even more than an enemy’s face.A ship at war with itself…
Aboard the guided missile frigate USS John Bell Hood, he will witness a ship spinning in a tidal pool of recklessness its crew wasted by drugs, its brass losing its grip on command. The Edge of HonorAnd now, as the Hood steams towards an explosive showdown with North Vietnam’s killer MiGs, he will be forced to make the most agonizing choice of his life one that could make his career…
or damn his soul. With his stunning new thriller, The Edge of Honor, P.T. Deutermann unfurls at full display the mastery he hinted at so brilliantly with his debut Scorpion in the Sea.

Official Privilege

Official Privilege begins with a mystery: in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, the mummified body of a black Navy lieutenant is found bolted inside the boiler of a deactivated battleship. While the cause of death is clear, the officer’s identity is not. With nerve ends raw from the media focus on recent scandals, the Pentagon bypas*ses its own investigative service and appoints a commander, Dan Collins, and a civilian, Grace Snow, to conduct an inquiry. Together they resolve to ignore the Navy’s political sensitivities and conduct a by the book murder investigation. But then they uncover evidence that points back to Washington, D.C., and a two year old unsolved case involving another black Navy lieutenant, a beautiful young woman, who died under violent circumstances. While they search for links between the two deaths, they attract the attention of one Malachi Ward. Cunning, ruthless, well paid, and ferociously resourceful, he will do whatever it takes to protect his hidden client’s privilege. In a tense, deadly game of cat and mouse, Malachi tracks Collins and Snow through Washington’s streets and corridors of power, determined to keep them from learning the secret behind the body in the battleship.

Sweepers

1969: a Navy SEAL, a trained assassin on a confidential mission, is dropped off in the Vietnam jungle. Days later, a U.S. gunboat returns to pick him up, but the boat’s young captain panics under fire and leaves the SEAL behind.

Twenty years later, that young captain is now a Pentagon admiral as the SEAL returns to Washington, D.C. with his own career change: he’s become a sweeper a clandestine cleaner of secret messes. And he’s come back to claim ‘some things of value’ things the admiral can’t afford to lose.

Navy Commander Karen Lawrence sharp, smart, and savvy is assigned to investigate the bad things that start happening to the admiral. She finds herself caught between one man’s boundless ambition and another’s relentless quest for revenge.

Zero Option

They call it ‘Wet Eye’: a biological weapon that literally eats out the eyes of its victims. Now, deep within the belly of the U.S. military establishment, one small silver canister of Wet Eye is missing lost because a career pencil pusher has cut a million dollar deal and signed it in blood. For David Stafford, a Defense Department investigator, finding the missing canister means ripping through layers of cover ups, bureaucracy, and one man’s murderous determination to sell Wet Eye to an international arms dealer. But the military would rather silence Stafford than admit to a security breach. And now, the only person who can stop a biological conflagration is an innocent child who has looked into the face of evil, and seen it with her own two eyes…

Train Man

On a dark night, a bridge is blown to smithereens, thunderously plunging a one hundred car train deep into the Mississippi River. In Washington, the FBI scrambles sending Assistant Director Hush Hanson and agent Carolyn Lang to investigate the deadly act of domestic terror. Hanson is a team player and killer marksman. Lang has an agenda of her own. By the time the two agents leave Washington, they are on a collision course with each other. And another bridge has exploded. Now, the investigation is exploding into an inter agency feud. The brass is after a terrorist cell, while Hanson and Lang suspect that a single man the Train Man is bringing down the bridges one by one. But as more death and destruction strike the river, no one can guess that far greater danger is looming. A top secret, emergency shipment of unstable nuclear waste has been sent West by train. And when the nukes meet the river there will be no way across, no time to turn back, and barely a chance in hell to stop the deadliest disaster of all…
AUTHORBIO: P.T. DEUTERMANN is the author of Zero Option, Sweepers, Official Privilege, The Edge of Honor, and Scorpion in the Sea, all available from St. Martin’s Paperbacks. He is a retired Navy captain and has served in both the Navy’s political staff directorate and in the Joint Chiefs of Staff as an arms control specialist. He lives in Georgia.

Hunting Season

When college kids hiking near an abandoned military industrial complex in West Virginia mysteriously disappear, special agent Janet Carter earnest, honest, and fed up with the stifling chauvinistic environment at the Roanoke FBI headquarters is called in to investigate. Unfortunately, there are no leads it’s as if the three just vanished into thin air. The authorities at the FBI are quick to write off the case as teenage runaways, and order Janet off the case but not before she has the chance to speak with the father of one of the missing, Edwin Kriess. Kriess is an ex ‘sweeper,’ a member of an elite CIA task force trained to track down and bring in rogue agents. To be a sweeper means to be expertly trained in the art of hunting and killing, and Kriess was not only a sweeper himself, but the agent in charge of training and leading the entire program. Only something went wrong an assignment to track down an agent involved in a Chinese espionage plot ended in a bloody massacre, and threatened to reveal a monumental government cover up. Kriess was quietly sacrificed to the scandal, and has since lived in solitude. But now his daughter is missing, and he knows that she didn’t run away and he will do anything to find her and bring her abductors to justice. His search brings him back to the abandoned industrial complex, where two right wing religious fanatics tied to the Waco disaster and inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing are building a hydrogen bomb. When the FBI learns of Kriess’ independent investigations, they fear the worst: he knows too many secrets already, and if his search efforts are successful, a scandal of epic proportions would unforld. They decide they need a plant, someone who has access to Kriess, and can win his trust. Someone who will report back what he knows, and what he finds and that person is Janet Carter.

Darkside

A midshipman’s six story fall onto a plaza at the United States Naval Academy is classified initially as an accident. The Academy’s administration none too affectionately called the ‘Dark Side’ by the midshipmen attempts to brush the ensuing controversy under the rug. But a bizarre twist complicates what might otherwise be a tidy cover up, and pulls Midshipman first class Julie Markham into the incident in a highly embarrassing manner. Suddenly there are rumors of homicide. Julie’s flawless reputation, high academic standing, and athletic achievements make her an unlikely suspect, but her father, Ev Markham, an Annapolis graduate who is now a professor there, knows the extremes to which the Dark Side will go to protect the Academy from scandal. Fearing Julie will be sacrificed to appease the rising public outcry, he hires high powered attorney Liz DeWinter as the Naval Criminal Investigative Service begins an investigation. Meanwhile, Jim Hall, the Academy’s civilian security officer, explores a trail of violent pranks in the locked subterranean tunnels connecting the Academy to Annapolis proper tunnels that lead to an unsolved murder. But as he follows, Jim finds himself becoming the quarry instead of the hunter, pursued by an ingenious predator whose dark secret is hidden deep beneath the Academy’s pristine grounds and sterling traditions. Darkside is a twisting, relentless thriller by an Annapolis insider simply, Deutermann at his best.

The Firefly

At midnight, in a secret medical clinic in Washington, D.C., two foreign doctors and their team are completing plastic surgery on an anonymous client who is changing the appearance of his face, among other things. After the procedure, the client begins to stir and suddenly the operating room erupts in violence, and the clinic is ablaze. Washington police conduct an arson investigation, with inconclusive results. But one tantalizing fragment of evidence suggests that a terrorist bombing may be imminent. The presidential inauguration is quickly approaching, and Washington’s police, fire, intelligence, military, federal, and White House security teams are making frantic preparations. Because of the strain on manpower, retired Secret Service agent Swamp Morgan is recalled to active duty. His task: investigate the incineration of the medical clinic as a ‘firefly’ Washington speak for something that looks like a threat but isn t. As Swamp begins what he thinks is a routine check and dismiss, the clinic s missing client begins preparations for his mission: to launch an attack on the American government a decapitation strike intended to wipe out both the outgoing and incoming administrations. As the crucial day approaches, Swamp, the only agent to take The Firefly seriously, must operate alone as the clock clicks down to a breathtaking finale. Filled with brilliant twists and turns and heart in your throat suspense, The Firefly offers first class entertainment from beginning to end.