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When I started this blog I tried to review a book or two a month, I called it Thriller Thursday. Remember that? Go on, click on the label, you'll see.

Well guess what? It's Thursday! Only now I'm doing something different in that I wanted to let you know about a non-fiction book I just read. In truth, it might just be the best non-fiction book I've ever read. Seriously.

It's called: DEAD WAKE, The Last Crossing Of The Lusitania, by Erik Larson. Here's a cute girl holding my copy:

The Lusitania i...

A month after Austin Police Officer Russell Smith was in a near-fatal car crash on his way home from patrol, I reached out to a community of people for help.
People who, on an a normal day, create the kind of mayhem and madness that Officer Smith deals with on a daily basis. People with evil in their minds, people who deal out death and destruction to the innocent and guilty, to the young and the old. Ruthless, murderous people.
People, quite frankly, who possess ginormously loving hearts and i...

We had an interesting experience recently that made very real the problem with eye-witness testimony, and shows why I rarely rely on it as a prosecutor unless there's some very good corroborating evidence.

One weekday evening, my son and three friends were in a nearby park (he and the two girls were eleven, and another boy was eight). They encountered two boys who identified themselves as 8th graders at a nearby middle school. Unfortunately, these boys began throwing rocks at the younger kids,...

I'm delighted to be able to show off the cover art for my next Hugo Marston novel, The Paris Librarian . As you can see, it's a little different from the previous Hugo books and I absolutely love it.


ÌýAnd it's especially appropriate that I get to reveal it this week of all weeks, simply because it's:
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There are many people in my life who make it possible for me to write, people who have supported me in various ways and allowed me to act and feel like a real author.

Well, thanks to them...

This hasn't been in the news for some reason, but now that the case is over I can publish the transcript of a trial in which presidential candidate Donald Trump played a small role, right here in Austin. This happened when he was campaigning in Texas -- as part of his pro-law enforcement platform he rode out with APD, in Nigel Sector.

About halfway through the evening the officer he was with, Officer Dover, pulled over Christopher Paul Bacon for failing to maintain a single lane (aka weaving)....

I'm running for President of the United States of America.

I need to begin with an admission: I had believed that you need to be born on U.S. soil to be eligible but I now know that's not true. If Ted Cruz is eligible, as a Cuban/Canadian/American, I realize that I am, too.

Also, if Ted Cruz is a viable candidate, I can be, too. I mean, seriously.

My qualifications:Ìý

As a prosecutor I have years of public service under my belt, and have accepted and executed the demands of this office with d...

A woman wrote to me recently, asking for a favor for her dying father. She told me that he’s a fan of my books but is unlikely to be around by the time the next one comes out, in June of this year. Her father, Michael, is dying of liver cancer, and she hoped I might be able to get him an early, pre-release copy of the book.
For those who don’t know, publishers do print advanced review copies (ARCs), which are not fully edited but look pretty much like the finished version. They are not usu...<![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]>

Don't worry, the death panels are over. You and your loved ones are safe now.

Actually, you always were because the death panels I'm referring to only kill pretend people, in books. Here's a picture of one, snapped this past weekend at the huge mystery conference called , in Long Beach. Look how harmless they are (I'llÌý identify them in a moment):

Naturally, I don't approve of bunny ears in a photo, that's just silliness, very juvenile. Never do it myself, frightful behavior. But...

This morning I'm driving to west Texas, to a book festival in Odessa called . It's a long journey of more than 300 miles, so that's about five or six hours in the car by myself. I don't get all that much time alone so I'm looking forward to that part. But the trip will also be a celebration for me, because it will be two years to the day since the launch of my first novel, . (For a blast from the past, here is for that day.)

This means that Hugo Ma...

Not your average trailer, this one previews the fourth novel in my Hugo Marston mystery series by showing how the books are created.

But let's not dwell on who forces whose kids to write what.

A prequel to the series, THE BUTTON MAN is set in London, England, where Hugo Marston is head of security at the US Embassy. He's assigned to protect a couple of movie stars, who've received death threats. But before he even meets them, one turns up dead in a graveyard.... Enjoy!