FICTION · PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS
Justin Scott
Also known as: PAUL GARRISON
Justin Scott is the author of thirty-eight thrillers, mysteries and sea stories including The Man Who Loved The Normandie, Rampage, and The Shipkiller, which the International Thriller Writers lists in Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads. Born in Manhattan July 20, 1944, he grew up on Long Island’s Great South Bay in a family of professional writers. His father, A. Leslie Scott, wrote Westerns and poetry. His mother, Lily K. Scott, wrote novels and short stories for slicks and pulps. His sister, Alison Scott Skelton, is a novelist, as was her late husband, C.L. Skelton. The Mystery Writers of America nominated Scott for Edgar Allan Poe awards for Best First Novel (1974)and Best Short Story (1994). He has been a member of the Authors League, the Adams Round Table and, for thirty-five years, The Players. He is an Eagle Scout. Scott holds Bachelors and Masters in history, (B.A. Harpur College, 1966; Two-year M.A. State University of New York at Binghamton, 1969). Before becoming a writer, he drove boats and trucks, built Fire Island beach houses, edited an electronic engineering journal, and tended bar in a Hell’s Kitchen saloon. He writes the Ben Abbott detective series about a small-town Connecticut real estate agent, and collaborated with Clive Cussler on nine Isaac Bell detective adventure series thrillers set in Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era, three of which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. PAUL GARRISON is his main pen name under which he writes modern sea stories and an occasional thriller based on a Robert Ludlum character. Scott lives in Connecticut with his wife, filmmaker Amber Edwards, with whom he collaborated on a 2021 thriller published by the University of Louisiana Press—Forty Days and Forty Nights by Amber Edwards & Justin Scott. His latest book, just emerging from the computer, is an Elizabethan historical novel, Treason’s Playwright.
The beginning of this yarn is my poor father's character.
— from The wrecker, 1892
Most acclaimed
The Turning
The message was unexpected but instantly recognizable. A voice resonated from a distance and somehow from within. Against all earthly logic, it carried a divine command. And five very different people knew they were summoned to obey. Their actions were demanding, but not particularly grand. Only later would they see a pattern emerge - one that links their tasks together and comes to challenge the cultural direction of the nation. They realize that one small personal response unveiled a new realm of moral responsibility. And this affirmation of everyday hope captures the attention of millions. But power and money are at stake. Malicious elements soon align themselves to counter the trend. To succeed they must also undermine its source. Can we really believe that God speaks to people today? Surely this must be dismissed as superstition or delusion. These well-intentioned but misguided individuals should not be allowed to cast our society back into the Dark Ages. The public debate and media frenzy place an unprecedented spotlight on knowing and doing God's will. The five encounter threats, but try to remain steadfast in their faith. Had God indeed imparted wisdom on selected individuals? Is this sweep of events part of his divine purpose? The movement may herald a profound renewal -- one that some are calling The Turning.
The wrecker
1892
In The Chase, Clive Cussler introduced an electrifying new hero, the tall, lean, no-nonsense detective Isaac Bell, who, driven by his sense of justice, travels early-twentieth-century America pursuing thieves and killers . . . and sometimes criminals much worse.It is 1907, a year of financial panic and labor unrest. Train wrecks, fires, and explosions sabotage the Southern Pacific Railroad's Cascades express line and, desperate, the railroad hires the fabled Van Dorn Detective Agency. Van Dorn sends in his best man, and Bell quickly discovers that a mysterious saboteur haunts the hobo jungles of the West, a man known as the Wrecker, who recruits accomplices from the down-and-out to attack the railroad, and then kills them afterward. The Wrecker traverses the vast spaces of the American West as if he had wings, striking wherever he pleases, causing untold damage and loss of human life. Who is he? What does he want? Is he a striker? An anarchist? A revolutionary determined to displace the "privileged few"? A criminal mastermind engineering some as yet unexplained scheme?Whoever he is, whatever his motives, the Wrecker knows how to create maximum havoc, and Bell senses that he is far from done—that, in fact, the Wrecker is building up to a grand act unlike anything he has committed before. If Bell doesn't stop him in time, more than a railroad could be at risk—it could be the future of the entire country.Filled with intricate plotting and dazzling set pieces, The Wrecker is one of the most entertaining thrillers in years.
Treasure!
In the spring of 1945 Benito Mussolini, knowing that the Allied armies were advancing, and sure that his only chance of survival was in Switzerland, headed toward that border with his close associates, his mistress and a cache of treasure estimated at between eighty and one hundred and twenty million dollars in currency, gold, jewels and priceless historical documents. In the northern Italian town of Dongo, he was captured and executed by the partisans. An inventory was made of the treasure, which then mysteriously disappeared. Today, despite the investigations and trials of those involved in its transport, this vast treasure of the Italian people is still missing. It is against these facts and this setting that A. E. Hotchner's exciting novel is played. Paul Selwyn, an American, becomes involved in an intrigue that takes him from Italy to Paris to London to Stockholm, and fially back to the small town of Dongo on Lake Como, searching for the lost treasure.