Showing results by author "Blair Howard" in All Categories

An elite force of private military contractors. A ragtag band of aging war heroes and civilians. It began with a simple kidnapping. It ended in an all-out private war. In Harry Starke’s world, nothing is ever quite as it seems. His wife is lying in hospital in a coma. His best friend and business partner is not who he says he is. Once again Harry says never again, but when his intellectually disabled uncle is kidnapped and becomes a pawn in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Three Days in Hell, action-packed from start to finish, is the story of Confederate General Bushrod Johnson's Chickamauga as told through the eyes and words of one of his staff officers, Major Chester Rigby. The author takes you onto the battlefield as no one has done before. He plunges you right into the center of the action, which doesn't let up until the very end. It's a story of heroism, desperate deeds, and death and destruction on a scale the likes of which had never been seen before.

It takes only one phone call to turn Harry Starke into a monster. It begins when Harry’s kid brother is brutally murdered, his body thrown into the murky waters of the Tennessee River. That alone would be enough to set Harry on the warpath, but less than 24 hours after the body is found, Harry finds out there’s a bounty on his head, too. $25,000. His answer? Strike first and strike hard. And so it begins. Harry and his army of three must go up against old enemies, but they face almost insurmountable odds when they go looking for retribution.

On a balmy day in April 1863, Union Colonel Abel D. Streight, at the head of a brigade of federal infantry, set out on a 220-mile ride to destroy the Western and Atlantic railroad at Rome, Georgia. The most fascinating thing about the raid is that Streight's brigade of four infantry regiments, almost 1,800 soldiers, was mounted on mules, a huge problem in itself; few of his men had ever ridden a horse, let alone a mule.

She appeared out of nowhere. A chance meeting. And then she was gone, abducted. The shadow crossed in front of the car so fast I didn’t have time to stop. I hit the brakes hard and swerved into the mud at the side of the road. Looking out through the deluge it was difficult to make out the figure coming towards the driver’s window, but as it came closer I could see it was a girl, just a kid. Instinctively, my hand went for my gun and rested on the grip as she approached.

Albert Westwood, a.k.a. Nero, former British special forces sniper extraordinaire and ex-mercenary, just wants to live a normal life. Be left alone. The problem is, he’s a wanted man. A queen’s pardon for one more job could be just what he needs. But the job is deadly. He has to find and stop the current leader of a deep state organization known as the Peacemakers, whose goal is to bring about world peace even if it means destroying it in the process.

Cassie Morgan was just 17 years old when she died at the hands of a sadistic killer. Homicide Detective Harry Starke caught the case, and he knew right from the beginning that it was going to be a bad one, and he was right. Too many clues, too many suspects, too many bodies, and a police chief more interested in his career than justice for the victims. For Harry, it was the last straw, and it had been a long time coming.

The Nicolette Percy case was a nightmare. She solved it, but the solution generated more questions than answers. Captain Kate Gazzara, suspended from duty and in danger of losing her job, is determined to find the answers and embarks on a one woman investigation deep into the heart of Appalachia. Within hours of her arrival in the tiny town of Loeb, Tennessee, she finds herself not only in danger of losing her job but also her life.

A vicious killer is on the loose in the small but affluent bedroom community of Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. The local police are ill-equipped to handle a murder investigation. So they call on the expert: the tenacious and dedicated Detective Kate Gazarra of the Chattanooga PD. The killer is careful, leaving no obvious evidence and no motive. Lieutenant Gazarra must pursue high-profile suspects, navigate interference by the city’s elite, and get inside the mind of the killer. All while training in a new partner and appeasing the formidable Chief Johnston.

A brutal murder. An impossible crime. Why did Genevieve have to die? Who murdered her? Caught between two worlds, one where she didn’t belong, the other she couldn’t give up, Genevieve committed the ultimate deception and married into a world of wealth and privilege and it cost her her life. Kate Gazzara’s most difficult case, a mind-bending riddle. A gripping, fast-paced thriller that will keep you listening long into the night.

The phone call came on a Tuesday evening in the middle of August. Harry Starke hadn’t heard from his old school friend in almost five years, and he hadn’t thought about him in almost as long. Tom Sattler wanted to meet, and it wouldn’t wait until morning. But when Harry arrived at Sattler’s home less than an hour later, he found him lying in a pool of blood with a single gunshot wound to his head and .22 revolver lying close to his hand. Was it suicide, or was Tom Sattler murdered? If so, by whom and why?

The hills of horse country, Shenandoah Valley, the Blue Ridge Mountains and numerous wineries are among the state's offerings. Here's a guide to the national and state parks, the cities, towns and villages and everything in between. Places to stay and eat, along with recommended fall foliage tours.

A case 35 years cold. No witnesses, suspects, or leads. Two detectives who won’t let go. My name’s Harry Starke. I’m an ex-cop turned private investigator. It was a rainy Monday morning in June 2012 when Peter Sheffield walked into my office and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Two weeks in sunny Florida; all expenses paid. The catch was I had to solve a 35-year-old cold case. Sheffield’s parents were killed in a particularly nasty hit-and-run accident. The driver and the pickup truck that hit them were never found.

The team is back. So is the Peacemaker with a new and deadly plot that could extinguish all human life on the planet...except for a select few, of course. It began when a respected Belgian virologist smuggled his gain of function research out of his lab, research so dangerous he decided to destroy it before it could get into the wrong hands. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

On a dark day in April 1865, a band of former Confederate guerrillas slaughtered more than 40 Comanches, most of them women and children. This began a six-month reign of terror along the Santa Fe Trail as Comanche chief, White Eagle, took his revenge. The US Cavalry was assigned the task of tracking White Eagle and his warriors down. Lieutenant Colonel Ignatius O'Sullivan's orders were to either bring them in or kill them.

Commodore Richard Morian’s mission is to capture the Imperator, but it will take a planetary invasion on a grand scale to do so, a battle fought in space, in the air, and on the ground. And all this to a backdrop of political intrigue that threatens to bring the entire Sovereign system down.

Fourteen months after first contact, as the Sovereign Star Systems prepare for another alien attack, Captain Richard Morian and the Avenger are ordered to Beta Arietis in the constellation of Aries where they hope to find new resources and perhaps even new allies to help with the war effort.

Brandon Beck hanged himself, or did he? Was it suicide or cold blooded murder? On a cold dark night in February, Harry Starke runs into someone he hasn’t seen in almost 25 years. The man has a problem. He asks Harry for help. Harry turns him down, and thus becomes the last person to see Brandon Beck alive. Did Beck hang himself? Was he murdered? Either way, why? Harry Starke, now the prime suspect, vows to find out.

It was April 1, 1998, when the bodies of two teenagers, a young fella and his girlfriend - both high school seniors - were found among the trees on a lonely road just inside the city limits. The bodies had been stripped and left for the wild animals to...well, you get the idea. The cops had a good idea who the killer was, but they never could prove it, so the case went cold until April 1, 2012, when local DA, Larry Spruce, asked me to take a look at it.

When a farmer discovers a man’s in the passenger seat of his car, Captain Kate Gazzara is called in to lead the murder investigation. A simple carjacking gone wrong? That’s what it looks like but, as we all know, looks can be deceiving. So, Kate probes deeper and quickly discovers that her victim isn't the first, but only the latest in a string of murders going back over five years.