• Neon Shadows
    Los Angeles was a city of electric lies. Under the relentless glare of the neon signs, the truth was something that only existed in the shadows, and in the shadows, everything had a price. Victor Thorne had spent forty years building a kingdom of silence. As a retired titan of the city's underground trade, he knew where every body was buried and which judges were on his payroll. He lived in a...
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  • Whispers on the Estate
    The heating in tower block seven broke on a Tuesday in November. By Thursday, the flat was cold enough that Sarah Murphy could see her breath indoors. She pulled her coat on inside and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders like a shawl and tried not to think about the bottle of whiskey in her cupboard. Manchester in 2008 was a city that had forgotten how to pretend. The financial crisis had...
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  • The Rust Belt
    I. The truck wouldn't start. I kicked the tire and the tire kicked back, or at least that's how it felt—solid, unyielding, exactly as stubborn as everything else in this town. Danny stood on the porch watching me. He was sixteen, all elbows and attitude, wearing a hoodie that was too big and a look on his face that said he was already tired of me and this town and everything that came with...
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  • The Pattern in the Mind
    The first student died on a Thursday in October. I was lecturing on collective unconscious at Columbia, standing in front of two hundred and thirty-three students in Low Library's main hall, when I noticed him—Daniel Park, junior year, psychology major, sat in the third row, always attentive, always taking notes. That day, he was not taking notes. He was staring at the blackboard, his pupils...
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  • The Crown of Dust
    The humid air of the Congo Basin felt like a wet blanket draped over Captain Alistair Finch's shoulders. He wiped the grime from his brass monocle, staring at the impenetrable wall of emerald green that lay before him. Behind him, his small contingent of porters and a disgraced botanist named Dr. Aristhone were hacking through the undergrowth with a desperation that bordered on madness. Finch...
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  • Emergency Call
    A Southern Gothic Tale When an innocent man faces execution, desperate measures are required to halt the machinery of death. The investigator must decode cryptic clues left by the condemned while racing against time, proving that justice delayed becomes justice denied. The investigation began on a morning when fog clung to the streets like a shroud. Inspector Jonathan Blackwell arrived at the...
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  • The Berlin Protocol
    ## Act I: The Outset Berlin in 1961 was a city of concrete and paranoia, a place where the wind carried the scent of ozone and betrayal. Leo lived in a small apartment in the Wedding district, his walls covered in maps and encrypted telegrams. He was a "Ghost"—a double agent who had spent five years playing the Soviets and the Americans against each other. He was a master of the lapped-over...
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  • The Observer at Five Points
    I first met him in the basement of a church on Park Row, where the Five Points intersection spat its poorest onto the street and the church basement offered dry bread and a place to sit that was not wet. He was sitting alone at a scarred wooden table, studying a map of New York City as if it were a chessboard. He was perhaps thirty-five, dressed in clothes that were well-made but strange—the...
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  • The Zero Sum Game
    ## Act I: The Outset The bunker was a concrete cube buried three hundred feet beneath the surface of a nameless desert. There were no windows, no clocks, and no names—only designations. Subject 42, formerly known as Julian, sat on a steel cot, staring at the flickering fluorescent light on the ceiling. He had been here for three years, part of a "behavioral study" on the effects of prolonged...
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  • The Pattern in the Blueprint
    The first time I met Edward Hartwell, I thought he was the kind of man who would return your shopping cart at the supermarket. Dr. Helena Cross, military psychologist, London School of Economics. That's my title, at least. My actual job, as described in the contract signed by a security consulting firm called Meridian Global, was to conduct a psychological evaluation of a "high-profile defense...
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