The Maltese Falcon meets North by Northwest and Vince Flynn in Robert Ellis’s debut novel. Three weeks before a crucial election, a man is gunned down execution-style in a D.C. office. Police are quick to call it a case of robbery gone bad, but Frank Miles suspects something far more sinister behind the murder of his business partner. As one of Washington's most esteemed kingmakers, Frank's manipulation of the media has earned him countless admirers . . . but just as many enemies. Now, for the first time in his life, Frank's met his match in a shadowy schemer as clever as himself—but far more lethal. A killer who’s all business. “Ellis spins a potent thriller.”
—Publishers Weekly
In a gleaming home in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill, a teenage girl has been brutally murdered. The atrocity kicks off an investigation by police who connect the teen’s murder to a bizarre string of increasingly disturbing murders. As the city’s panic rises, Teddy Mack, a civil attorney just out of law school, is forced by a partner at his new firm to defend the undefendable. But soon after, another girl goes missing. A girl who might still be alive. There’s a serial killer out there. And he’s collecting something horrific and vile. To end the madman’s reign, Teddy must enter his maze—a place of unimaginable terror where human demons emerge with a vengeance.
Lena Gamble, a young detective just promoted from Hollywood to the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, works her very first case: a vibrant young woman has been found brutally murdered in her own bed, the victim of a ritualized killing in a quiet neighborhood overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Why does the murder match another bizarre killing that occurred exactly one month ago? That’s what Lena Gamble has to find out before it’s too late. Before the infamous serial killer “Romeo” strikes again. “City of Fire is my kind of crime novel. Gritty, tight, and assured.”
—Michael Connelly
Lena Gamble’s trusted supervisor warns her straight out that she might be walking into a trap. The dismembered body of a young female has been found in a dumpster in Hollywood. There are no clues. Just an anonymous witness who delivers a driver’s license and a flash drive documenting the woman’s horrific kidnapping. “Finding the missing witness before the killer finds her may be Gamble's only hope of solving this deliciously twisted crime novel in which nothing is what it appears to be.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Detective Lena Gamble gets another late-night call. A horrific double murder at Club 3 AM, the hot new hangout for A-list celebs in Hollywood. And the case goes radioactive from the start. The first victim is Johnny Bosco, owner of Club 3 AM and an L.A. powerbroker. But the real shocker comes when Gamble turns over the second body: twenty-five-year-old Jacob Gant, acquitted just weeks ago of murdering his sixteen-year-old neighbor in L.A.'s latest trial-of-the-century. Who killed Lily Hight? And why is her life cloaked in mystery?
B O O K S I N O R D E R
"Robert Ellis is a master of suspense." MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE
Silence of the Lambs meets True Romance when Detective Matt Jones flies into Philadelphia to investigate the gruesome killing of an entire family in their lavish mansion on the Mainline. Is it the notorious Dr. Baylor, a former Beverly Hills plastic surgeon turned serial killer, who escaped capture just weeks ago in L.A.? Or is it a second serial killer, someone young and homegrown—someone even more erratic and terrifying? “Gleefully tense. A persistently gripping thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews
It's Detective Matt Jones's first night working homicide in L.A.: a man has been gunned down hard in a parking lot behind a popular grille on Hollywood Boulevard, his bullet-riddled body immediately pegged as the work of a serial robber who has been haunting Sunset Strip for months. Driven by the grisliness of the crime, the identity of the victim and the outrage, Jones and his rookie partner, Denny Cabrera, jump headfirst into the investigation with no idea they’re about to come face-to-face with a serial killer of unprecedented savagery. “Stunning emotional force.” —Booklist (Starred Review)
Book 3
A teenager on her fifteenth birthday goes skateboarding at dusk in Elysian Park overlooking Los Angeles—and never comes home. Matt Jones discovers her body buried in a shallow grave beneath a tree. Driven by the horror of the crime, Jones and his partner, Denny Cabrera, burn through the evidence and make an even more gruesome discovery. There’s another dead body out there, and the murders link to a turf war between an infamous mob figure and the power of Wall Street.
B O O K S I N O R D E R
Book 2
Book 1
Book 3
Book 2
Book 1
Book 4
A journalist with the Los Angeles Times calls Matt Jones and asks if he’d look over an unpublished story. Jones agrees to meet at the writer’s home in Manhattan Beach the next morning. But when he shows up—the majestic house shrouded in the fog—he finds the writer, his wife and young daughter, brutally murdered. While the cops and two bulls from the FBI are calling the savage killings the indiscriminate work of a madman, Jones knows in his gut that the vile murders have something to do with the ghosts lurking in the writer’s past. “Riveting. A moody, white-knuckle murder tale.” —Kirkus Reviews
The Detective Matt Jones Thriller Series
The Lena Gamble Thriller Novels
Thriller Novels