Richard Hawke

a novel

House of secrets

Caroline Repchuk

Dugald Steer

Kate Lee

Derek Matthews

Rhyming text and pop-up illustrations of various animals present common colors, including red, blue, green, and orange.

Discover a Rainbow of Colors

Snappy Little Colors

Private-eye Fritz Malone becomes embroiled in a murder case when his client, Robin Burrell--a witness at the trial of TV celebrity Marshall Fox, accused of killing two women--turns up dead, killed in the same manner as the prior victims.

A Novel of Suspense

Cold Day in Hell

When New York's Thanksgiving Day parade is torn apart by a gunman's rampage, private detective Fritz Malone, the son of the NYPD commissioner, discovers that the mayor had known about the shootout before it happened and sets out to uncover the truth about a possible conspiracy. A first novel. Reprint.

Speak of the Devil

Senator Andrew Foster has it all: charm to spare, a loving wife, a beautiful daughter, and a fast-track career that will surely land him one day in the White House. And with the sudden resignation of the vice president, that track may have gotten a lot faster. But there’s a problem. There are people who know that Andy Foster’s charm can get the better of him, and they have bugged the Shelter Island bungalow where he is enjoying a midnight tryst with a beautiful campaign adviser. But all hell breaks loose when a man carrying an iron pipe comes crashing through the bedroom’s sliding glass door. Within seconds, the young woman lies bloodied, dead on the sheets, and Foster has fled in panic. And it’s all on tape. As momentum builds for Foster’s likely selection as the next vice president, the senator’s only hope of keeping his involvement with the murdered woman secret is to locate his blackmailers. But even they don’t have their hands on the devastating images. The man they used for the job has turned the tables and is blackmailing them. All the while, Foster’s personal life is collapsing. His wife, Christine, senses that something is terribly wrong. Unhappy about their daughter’s living in a political fishbowl, Christine is also worried that she and her husband have drifted away from each other. Little does she know that power-hungry politicians and brutal gangsters are ready to rip her family utterly apart. From the rarefied halls of Washington to the briny boardwalks of Brighton Beach, Richard Hawke pulls back the curtain to reveal what is taking place inside the hearts and minds of the powerful people we read about every day in the news. With House of Secrets, Hawke has delivered a pulse-pounding thriller that ignites the fatal mixture of politics, arrogance, and lust.

A Novel

House of Secrets

In the stew and dazzle of New York City, savvy, irreverent Fritz Malone–who Susan Isaacs called “the perfect balance of noir P.I. and decent guy”–is embroiled in a string of grisly murders that drags him behind the lurid headlines into the tangled affairs of some the city’s most beautiful people and their ugly truths. When two women linked with charismatic late-night TV personality Marshall Fox are found brutally slain in Central Park, Fox becomes the prime suspect and is charged with the murders. At the tabloid trial, one of Fox’s ex-lovers, Robin Burrell, is called to testify–and is instantly thrust into the media’s harsh spotlight. Shaken by a subsequent onslaught of hate mail, Robin goes to Fritz Malone for help. Malone has barely begun to investigate when Robin is found sadistically murdered in her Upper West Side brownstone, hands and feet shackled and a shard of mirror protruding from her neck. But it’s another gory detail that confounds both Malone and Megan Lamb, the troubled NYPD detective officially assigned to the case. Though Fox is in custody the third victim’s right hand has been placed over her heart and pinned with a four-inch nail, just as in the killings he’s accused of. Is this a copycat murder, or is the wrong man on trial? Teaming up with Detective Lamb, Malone delves deeper into Fox’s past, unpeeling the layers of the media darling’s secret life and developing an ever-increasing list of suspects for Robin’s murder. When yet another body turns up in Central Park, the message is clear: Get too close to Fox and get ready to die. And Malone is getting too close. In Cold Day in Hell, Richard Hawke has again given readers a tale about the dark side of the big city, a thriller that moves with breakneck speed toward a conclusion that is as shocking as it is unforgettable. Praise for Richard Hawke’s Speak of the Devil “Richard Hawke has managed what some writers spend a lifetime trying to accomplish: He has come up with a character and place that should entertain in countless stories to come.” –Rocky Mountain News “Fast-moving, first-rate . . . Hawke’s plot grabs us by the throat. . . . He keeps the suspense mounting.” –The Washington Post “[A] bang-bang thriller . . . We are absolutely powerless to stop reading.” –Chicago Tribune “Mr. Hawke’s [novel] tours the city . . . with unusual streetwise panache . . . but this isn’t a book that coasts on its urban geography. It lives by its wits, and its wits would work anywhere.” –The New York Times “A deftly paced debut that crackles and pops from page 1.” –Booklist (starred review) “Thrill-a-minute pacing and inspired plot twists.” –Newsday “[An] amazing thriller . . . Hawke’s dialogue is sharp and snappy and the plot moves with all the energy of New York City.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer “Hawke razzle-dazzles us with . . . bada-bing narration and quirky, well-drawn characters.” –The Boston Globe “[Packed] with a breathless pace and hair-pin turns.” –South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“[An] amazing thriller . . . [Richard] Hawke’s dialogue is sharp and snappy and the plot moves with all the energy of New York City.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer A child of Hell’s Kitchen and the bastard son of a beloved former police commissioner, Fritz Malone is all too familiar with New York City’s rougher side. So when a gunman opens fire at the crowded Thanksgiving Day parade, Fritz steps into action, giving chase. He then learns that someone dubbed “Nightmare” has been taunting the city’s leaders for weeks—and there’s more carnage to come, unless the city meets the madman’s impossible demands. The nervous police need an outside man, and Fritz fits the bill. Racing furiously against time, Fritz finds himself confounded by Nightmare’s multiple masks and messengers. But the dark story behind the story soon begins to emerge, and when Fritz zeroes in on the terrible truth, the killer retaliates by making things personal. Now Fritz must grapple with his deepest fear: Sometimes nightmares really do come true. Praise for Speak of the Devil “Hawke razzle-dazzles us with . . . bada-bing narration and quirky, well-drawn characters.”—The Boston Globe “[Packed] with a breathless pace and hairpin turns.”—South Florida Sun Sentinel “Fast-moving, first-rate . . . Hawke’s plot grabs us by the throat. . . . He keeps the suspense mounting.”—The Washington Post Book World “Solidly entertaining . . . Hawke makes a big splash on the thriller scene with his debut novel.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “[Speak of the Devil] tours the city with unusual streetwise panache . . . but this isn’t a book that coasts on its urban geography. It lives by its wits, and its wits would work anywhere.”—The New York Times “A bang-bang thriller . . . We are absolutely powerless to stop reading.”—Chicago Tribune “[A] deftly paced debut that crackles and pops from page 1.”—Booklist (starred review) “Thrill-a-minute pacing and inspired plot twists.”—Newsday “A rare combination of intrigue and intensity.”—Michael Connelly

Richard Hawke

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