The Mike Stoneman Thrillers by Kevin G. Chapman


Righteous Assassin

Mike Stoneman Thriller Book 1

by Kevin G. Chapman

Genre: Crime Thriller


Move over Harry Bosch, there's a new guy in town. . . . Detective Mike Stoneman can match wits with Harry any day of the week." -- Authors Show Linda

Kindle Book Award Semi-Finalist / CLUE Book Awards Semi-Finalist

A MOB BOSS IS EATEN ALIVE BY TIGERS AT THE BRONX ZOO. . . .That was the fourth unsolved murder in four months - each on the last Saturday. The other three were even more unusual . . . .Could they be related? The victims share no similar traits and have no connections. Why would a single killer choose such strange and disparate methods? Why spread your victims across all of New York?

Each new murder adds a piece to the killer's jigsaw puzzle, but unraveling the clues and finding the killer's pattern may not be enough to catch him. NYPD homicide Detectives Mike Stoneman and Jason Dickson have to stop the elusive killer before he completes his decathlon of death. And, they have to deal with an FBI profiler, who has been called in to help. Mike must also avoid being distracted by Medical Examiner Michelle McNeill, who seems to be on his mind a lot lately. She's an asset to the investigation, but is this any time to be starting a romance?

The task force is racing against the calendar. Only one thing is certain - on the last Saturday of the month, there will be blood.

**Only .99 cents!**

Goodreads * Amazon

Check out the Audiobooks and listen to excerpts HERE!


Deadly Enterprise

Mike Stoneman Thriller Book 2


"This is a stellar follow up to Righteous Assassin. The pacing is perfect and the character interactions are authentic and entertaining. With a tight plotline and plenty of action, this is indeed an excellent crime thriller. Can't wait to read more of Stoneman's cases. Highly recommend!" Anna Willett, award winning horror and suspense author


Kindle Book Award Semi-Finalist / Chanticleer CLUE Award Short List


WHO IS THE DEAD GIRL THEY FISHED OUT OF THE EAST RIVER?   

Is she just a drug-addicted hooker? Medical examiner Michelle McNeill thinks it's a murder, and NYPD Homicide detective Mike Stoneman agrees.  When Mike and his partner, Jason Dickson, start to dig into the case, they run into unexpected obstacles that point in a disturbing direction.
  
In order to uncover the truth, Mike and Jason must go outside the lines and risk their own reputations, jobs - and lives.  This case is one that Mike can't walk away from, no matter how much he wants to.
 
Harry Bosch fans will love this fast-paced police thriller from award-winning author Kevin G. Chapman. Book #1 in the Mike Stoneman Thriller series, Righteous Assassin, was named one of the top 20 Mystery/Thrillers of 2019 by the Kindle Book Review. The series continues here.

Goodreads * Amazon

Check out the Audiobooks and listen to excerpts HERE!


Lethal Voyage

Mike Stoneman Thriller Book 3


"Filled with action, drama, and surprising twists, "Lethal Voyage" is a captivating addition to the Mike Stoneman series, guaranteed to delight readers old and new!" InD'Tale Magazine (5-star Crowned Heart)


Finalist - 2021 RONE Award / Finalist CLUE Award 


A DEAD BODY can ruin a vacation. . . .

It was a suicide, wasn't it? . . . Maybe the on-board production of Chicago isn't the only place people are getting murdered!

NYPD homicide detective Mike Stoneman and medical examiner Michelle McNeill just want a relaxing cruise. But, Michelle is convinced that there is foul play at work in the death of a Broadway talent agent's wife.

The ship's head of security wants to keep it quiet. But, how many bodies can he cover up during one sailing? When it looks like Michelle might be the next victim, Mike needs to find the killer and keep Michelle alive for the end of this  Lethal Voyage. 

"Move over Harry Bosch, there's a new guy in town. Detective Michael Stoneman can match wits with Harry any day of the week." -- - "The Authors Show"

Don't miss the next installment in the Mike Stoneman Thriller series!

Goodreads * Amazon

Check out the Audiobooks and listen to excerpts HERE!


Fatal Infraction

Mike Stoneman Thriller Book 4

He took a knee for social justice. Now he's dead. Controversial quarterback Jimmy Rydell’s body was found naked – on the Central Park carousel. Who killed him? How did he get there two days after he disappeared? . . . And why was the body frozen? Jimmy’s team just wants to move on, after collecting on the $20 million insurance policy. Jimmy’s teammate – the one who threatened to kill him – swears he wasn’t there. Jimmy’s bodyguard had the night off. Somebody is going down for this if NYPD homicide detectives Mike Stoneman and Jason Dickson can find a theory that explains all the bizarre facts. They just hope the case doesn’t tear the team, and the City, apart first.

Goodreads * Amazon

Check out the Audiobooks and listen to excerpts HERE!


Kevin G. Chapman is an attorney specializing in labor and employment law. He is a past Chair of the Labor & Employment Law Network of the Association of Corporate Counsel, leading a group of 6800 in-house employment lawyers. Kevin is a frequent speaker at Continuing Legal Education seminars and enjoys teaching management training courses.

Kevin’s passion (aside from fantasy baseball, golf and tournament poker) is writing fiction. Kevin’s first Novel: Identity Crisis: A Rick LaBlonde, P.I. Mystery, was self-published through Xlibris in 2003, and is now available via Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book. His second novel, A Legacy of One, published in 2016, was a finalist for the Chanticleer Book Review’s Somerset Award for Literary Fiction. A Legacy of One is a serious book, filled with political and social commentary and a plot involving personal identity, self-determination, and the struggle to make the right life decisions. Kevin is currently working on a re-writing and re-editing of A Legacy of One, scheduled for re-launch in the summer of 2021.

Kevin’s current project is a crime-thriller series that will have a least five installments. Book #1 -- Righteous Assassin (A Mike Stoneman Thriller) -- has some serious sub-themes, but it's a serial killer chase and it's intended to be enjoyable and easy to read. It was named one of the top 20 Mystery/Thrillers of 2019 by the Kindle Book Review and a finalist for the Chanticleer CLUE award for mysteries & thrillers. Book #2 in the Mike Stoneman Thriller series, Deadly Enterprise, was published on December 2, 2019 and was named one of the top 20 Mystery/Thrillers of 2020 by the Kindle Book Review and is currently Short-Listed for the 2020 Chanticleer Book Review CLUE award. Book #3, Lethal Voyage, was published November 22, 2020 and is already generating stellar reviews and is Short-Listed for the Chanticleer CLUE award.

Kevin has also written several short stories, including Fool Me Twice, the winner of the New Jersey Corporate Counsel Association's 2010 Legal Fiction Writing Competition, which was the genesis of the character Mike Stoneman, the protagonist in Righteous Assassin. Fool Me Twice is available as a stand-alone short story free on amazon.com, or you can get it free from Kevin’s website. He has also written one complete screenplay (unproduced so far) and has another screenplay and two more novels currently in the works, one of which is a sci-fi space opera epic.

Kevin is a resident of Central New Jersey and is a graduate of Columbia College (‘83), where he was a classmate of Barack Obama, and Boston University School of Law (’86). Readers can contact Kevin via his website at www.KevinGChapman.com.

Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram * Bookbub * Amazon * Goodreads



Guest blog post / Article / re: Fatal Infraction (draft working)

These days, the subject of how police officers treat suspects – particularly non-White suspects – is very much in the news. What factors cause police to have conscious or unconscious bias against Blacks and other minority groups? How to we deal with this as a society? Tough questions, for sure. As a writer and reader of crime fiction, I’m very much aware that stories about cops (in books and in movies and TV shows) mostly portray the “bad” guys as guilty and the cops as the “good” guys who strive to protect the public and uphold justice. Sometimes the cops are corrupt and are really “bad” guys, or they have drug or alcohol problems. Sometimes the criminals have ambiguous motives. But few stories, my own included, include “good” cops behaving in overtly (or even subtly) racist ways. It doesn’t make for great fictional storytelling, in most cases.

When I started working on the outline of my newest book – installment #4 in my Mike Stoneman Thriller series – I decided to address the racism issue, as well as others, within the context of my existing characters. When my readers first met NYPD homicide detective Mike Stoneman in book #1 (Righteous Assassin), he was giving a hard time to his new, young, partner – a newly-promoted Black detective named Jason Dickson. Mike called him “Kid” or “Rook” and treated him with distain at times. Jason pushed back and their relationship was tense. We found out that Mike thought Jason was the unfair beneficiary of a departmental affirmative action program that gave him the promotion to detective when he didn’t deserve it. Other candidates who were White scored higher on the detective’s exam, but Jason jumped over them so that not all the new detective promotions would be White. Mike thought that was unfair. Later in the story, Mike’s very recent love interest, medical examiner Michelle McNeill, points out that Jason didn’t do anything besides apply for the promotion and score as high as he could on the exam. It wasn’t his fault that he got selected.

By the end of Righteous Assassin, Mike and Jason had fully bonded into a partnership. Jason, despite Mike’s sometimes harsh treatment, learned from his experienced partner, and in the end had his back. Mike recognized that Jason could have thrown Mike under the bus, but he didn’t. Then, in book #2 (Deadly Enterprise) we learn along with Jason that Mike had another reason for his treatment of his young partner that had nothing to do with discrimination or racism. I won’t spoil it for you, but it explained a few things. Still, the undercurrent of Jason’s struggle to be a great detective while also being the only Black detective in the upper Manhattan homicide division is always there. So, tackling the subject in book #4 was not a huge stretch.

The main plot of book #4 (Fatal Infraction) is the murder of a Black NFL quarterback named Jimmy Rydell. Jimmy was already a lightning rod of controversy for taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality toward Blacks and racial justice in general. (Sound familiar? Jimmy is not supposed to be Colin Kaepernick, but in a very real way, the NFL “murdered” Colin’s career by running him out of the league for his protests.) Naturally, one theory about who might have murdered Jimmy is that it was some racist who was out to get him because of his protests. The story includes a player on the team who is a good ol’ southern boy with KKK roots and a racist background. He also threatened to kill Jimmy. Yep, he’s a suspect. So, racism, protests for social justice, and violence against Blacks are all built into this story line.

As Mike and Jason investigate the case, I have an opportunity to have Jason (and others) show Mike how racism creeps into things, and how Mike may not be as non-racist as he thinks. I have Mike attend a mandatory training course on unconscious bias. I have a scene where Mike deals with overtly sexist (and perhaps less overtly racist) behavior within the police group toward a Black female detective who was recently promoted. Mike has to confront every day incidents of racist behavior that he had been overlooking. Then, he has to confront his own failure to do anything about them. All this gets baked into the plot and gave me the opportunity to explore the issues a little bit, without making them the focus of the book. Mike’s not perfect, and by the end of this story, he is more aware of how imperfect he is. Going forward, he has to make a decision to be better and not just think about it. Both Jason and Michelle tell him this.

The challenge for a fiction writer is how to avoid making your hero protagonist look unsympathetic. He’s your hero. You can have peripheral characters who are racists and who can get their comeuppance, but that’s easy. They were “bad” guys. The hard part is to have “good” guys who aren’t always part of the solution. And you know the saying – if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. The good guys can become part of the solution – but first they have to recognize the existence of the problem. The problem, I would argue, is not the bad, racist cops who beat the Black suspects (or shoot them). The problem is that they are allowed to get away with it and are not called out by the supposedly “good” cops, who tend to protect their fellow cops rather than weed out bad behavior. I’ve written about a bunch of corrupt cops – even cops who murdered innocent people to protect themselves. But in all those cases, the bad cops got caught and punished (or were killed themselves). What about the bad cops who get away with it because other cops protect them? Now there’s a story – but it’s hard to write it and still be entertaining. I’m not writing literary fiction with a serious dramatic edge. I’m writing crime-thrillers intended to be escapist entertainment (and maybe a Netflix series?). But, that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little big of edge.

Fatal Infraction has allowed me to get a little serious within the confines of my characters and their fictional universe. I’m pleased with the final result. I’m hoping that the small percentage of overly-sensitive (or racist) readers who will give me poor reviews because they don’t appreciate the subtle acknowledgements that systemic racism is real will be balanced out by readers who appreciate the reality baked into this book. I hope you will read it and enjoy it – and also think about it a little bit. If I get a few people to think, then I’m happy.

Fatal Infraction, and the other three books in the Mike Stoneman Thriller series are available as ebooks, paperbacks, and hardcovers from Amazon, and as audiobooks wherever audiobooks are sold (including Audible). Book #5 in the series, Perilous Gambit, will be out in late 2021.

 

Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!

$25 Amazon giftcard – 1 winner,

ebook set of The Mike Stoneman Thrillers – 1 winner,

audiobook set of The Mike Stoneman Thrillers – 1 winner,

ebook of Righteous Assassin – 3 winners!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


 

3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I hope so, Brenda! My readers love both the main plots and the ongoing character subplots through the series. I've really enjoyed writing them! -- Kevin G. Chapman

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  2. Thanks for hosting the book tour! I'm always interested in chatting with readers, so post comments here or contact me via my website. Make sure to enter the giveaway contest above -- and visit my website at www.kevingchapman.com to download your FREE Mike Stoneman short story -- "Fool Me Twice." -- Kevin G. Chapman

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