Blake Banner

IF YOU CROSS THE DEVIL YOU FACE HELL'S FURY... Perennial USA TODAY & Amazon 6-million copy bestselling authors DAVID ARCHER and BLAKE BANNER have joined forces once again to create one hair-raising explosion of carnage and intrigue The man called Rogue is driven. He is driven to hunt down, kill and destroy those who traffic death, drugs and prostitution on the streets - those who prey on the weak and the vulnerable. And he is damned good at what he does. What he does not know is why he is driven. Because he doesn't remember who he is, or how he became the monster he has become. So the man called Rogue is on a mission to destroy the predators, and also a quest to find himself, to discover who - or what - he is. That quest takes him to New York. Glimmers of memory tell him there was a street on the Upper West Side, an apartment, a woman, maybe a home... But what Rogue finds there is not domestic bliss. Nor is it a light to lead him out of his darkness. What he finds is a mesh of lies, corruption and violence deeper and more complex than he could have imagined. What he finds is that, if you cross the Devil you face Hell's fury. What he discovers is that Hell's fury is what he carries in his heart every damned day of his life. That is what makes him the monster he has become.

A woman shot, and a mummified corpse. What do these things have in common? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series The neighbor called it in because the house next door, normally empty and silent, at two AM was a blaze of light, with people shouting and car doors slamming, like gunshots in the night. Until he heard two reports that echoed down the dark, silent street and spoke of death, two reports that were not slamming doors, but gunshots. That was when he called it in. What the cops found at the scene was a house with the doors open and all the lights on, and the body of April Olsen lying on the floor of the cellar with two gunshot wounds in her chest. But the weird thing was what they found beside her: a hole in the concrete, six foot long and three foot wide, and inside it the mummified body of a man who'd died thirty-five years earlier, shot twice in the chest with the same gun that had just killed April Olsen. Was it the controversial Professor Allen Bernstein? Or was it somebody Bernstein had killed before he fled to Mexico? Either way, it was now a cold case. A case for Stone and Dehan.

The X-Files, after all, exist only in fiction... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series It wasn't just the twenty years since Danny Brown's death that made it the hardest case of their careers: it was that the manner of his death was, quite simply, impossible. His body was reduced to ash from his neck to his ankles, in the middle of Soundview Park. His unburned feet were still in his flip-flops. His unburned head was just eighteen inches away, where it had apparently rolled; and his genitals were too were unburned. To make matters worse, though it had rained the night before, there were no footprints to be found - anywhere.Detective Stone keeps an open mind, but his partner, Detective Dehan, is convinced there is a logical, terrestrial explanation for the gruesome murder. The X-Files, after all, exist only in fiction, don't they? Then they start to hear about the lights in the sky that night, and the threatening visits the FBI paid to the witnesses that saw them - and Detective Dehan starts to wonder: how was Danny Brown killed - and above all, by whom...?This is a cold case Dehan and Stone might never solve...

It was not a cold case. Or was it...? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series Sebastian Acosta has been gunned down at three AM on a Saturday morning, sitting behind the wheel of a beaten up Toyota. The passenger door is open and a few paces away his pal, Luis Irizarry, lies with his life ebbing away through two gunshot wound in his chest. It should be a red hot case, except that fifteen years earlier, Rosario Rojas was raped and strangled in that self same house, the house Luis was crawling toward, the house that belonged to Angela Rojas, Rosario's daughter.Rosario, who was like a sister to Marta Flores, Detective Dehan's mother.Things get more complicated when it emerges that Rosario had started to get involved in a set whose morals Marta had considered a little too lax, a bit too broad-minded; when it emerges that the two boys who just got shot are the sons of two of the couples that made up that set.But then it turns out, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in this old, cold case...

Another victim nobody cared about...shot by some punk nobody cared about... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series When the body of a tramp was found in a dumpster on Lafayette and Bryant in the Bronx, with no papers and no ID, the case was filed as unsolved - another victim nobody cared about, shot by some punk nobody cared about. That was twelve years ago. Then Detective Stone notices that the 'tramp' had a hundred dollar haircut and manicured nails. That makes him curious. He wants to know, who dresses a murder victim up as a tramp, then leaves them in full view in a dumpster? But the answers he gets are not the ones he expects, and before long their investigation leads Stone and Dehan to St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, and the darkest recesses of the human soul. It also leads them to some of the most powerful men in New York. Some, like Conor Hagan, head of the Irish Mob, are known criminals. But others are not... Stone's problem is deciding which of them are just criminals, and which are truly evil. That is, until ghosts start appearing from Dehan's past. Then things get complicated...

All there was of the body, was two bare arms... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series It was November in New York. Raining and cold, and the trees all looked like skeleton's hands. And Detective John Stone was having a problem with habeas corpus, because all there was of the body, was two bare arms. Two bare arms that somebody, twelve years ago, had put in a lock up in the East Bronx. What they had done with the rest of the woman, nobody knew. But as Stone and Dehan start to investigate, two things become clear: whoever killed the woman, wanted her arms to be found, as a boast, as a challenge. And that meant they were dealing with a psychopath - a serial killer. But who-the biker with a taste for beating up women? Or his best pal the Satanist and devotee of Crowley? Or perhaps the neurotic IT freak who spent his leisure hours surfing the net for porn? Or maybe somebody else...? One thing Stone understands clearly, whoever it is, is a master of misdirection...

It seemed to be a cold case like any other... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series It seemed to be a cold case like any other. So much so that Stone and Dehan hadn't even considered reviewing it - until private investigator Karl Baxter requested a copy of the police file. Then Stone got curious. Why did a second rate PI in the Bronx want to look into the case of a low life petty criminal found tied to a chair in his apartment, beaten and shot through the heart? And that question led to other questions, like, whose was second pool of blood on the floor? If there was a second victim, where was the body? Unfortunately, a chat with Baxter only raises more questions that threaten to drive Stone crazy: who is the mysterious Tamara Gunthersen? And what was the gig she did for the even more mysterious Geronimo dos Santos, back in 2015? At every turn the questions get deeper, and the women more tempting - and more dangerous. Until the strain on Stone and Dehan's partnership threatens to make it snap. Then Stone will be on his own...

A honeymoon. A remote island. And Murder... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series When detectives John Stone and Carmen Dehan who run the Cold Cases Department at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx choose their honeymoon together, there are three things they are very clear on: there must be good steak and whisky, it must be remote, and for two blissful weeks they must forget about work, about cold cases and about murder. So a small island off the north coast of Scotland in a 16th century castle seems to be just the job. After all, two out of three isn't bad. At first the place seems idyllic: The wild landscapes are breathtaking, the northern lights otherworldly and the fire-side talk, fuelled by good whisky and good Angus steak, is fascinating. Maybe a bit too fascinating when it leads to a forty year old mystery about a man murdered, shot with a .38 in a locked room in circumstances which are, quite simply, impossible. And when the island is cut off by a storm, and an identical murder is committed, well, what are two cold case cops on honeymoon to do...?

USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series An eighteen-year-old girl sets out one November night to walk five blocks down Gleason Avenue to her boyfriend's house. He calls her and she tells him she's on her way. It's a walk that should take ten minutes, but she never arrives. When she does turn up, it's five days later, washed up on the banks of the River Bronx, in Soundview Park, strangled to death. The detective who investigates the murder, a friend of the family, finds no forensic evidence, nothing of interest in her phone records, no witnesses to the abduction or the murder. Nothing. The case goes cold. Until her brother, Samuel, comes forward with new evidence he has found. And then the cases is handed to Detectives Stone and Dehan of the 43rd Precinct. They start asking the difficult questions, like how did she get into the river in the first place, and then the case starts heating up again...

The weather was freezing, but the case wasn't cold... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series The weather was freezing, but the case wasn't cold, it was too hot. It looked open and shut: Dr Agnes Shine had shot Dr Jose Robles eight times with a Sig Sauer Tacops p226, while they were drinking Californian wine in her living room; then she'd disappeared. But Assistant DA Costas Varufakis didn't like it and he was leaning on Deputy Inspector John Newman of the 43rd Precinct to have somebody look a bit deeper. That somebody was Detectives John Stone, and his partner Carmen Dehan. And when they started to look, everything looked wrong: the motive was wrong, the weapon was wrong, the location was wrong - even Assistant DA Varufakis was wrong. But when they discover the nature of Robles' relationship with Dr Alicia Cobos, and when the forensic team discover Robles' deleted Telegram app, thing go from wrong to very, very dark. Yet the two question on Stone's mind are: Is it all smoke and mirrors? And where is Dr Agnes Shine?

It should have been an open and shut case... USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series At forty-something, Bob Walklet was about to make a fortune with his IT company. But he'd made the mistake of falling in love with his assistant, twenty-something Sorka Williams. They were crazy about each other, and Bob had told his wife, Sheila - a thirty-something, ex-cop insurance consultant.He wanted a divorce. And there was a prenup'.When he was found in his bedroom, stabbed in the heart, her DNA was literally all over him, her prints were on the knife and a neighbor had seen her hurrying from the house at the time of death. Not only that, his death saved her from the prenup', and she cleaned up on the insurance.Open and shut.Except for the small matter that over two hundred guests, including her friend the Boston Police Commissioner, had all seen her deliver a speech at a conference two hundred miles away, right at the time Bob was killed.So the question Detectives Stone and Dehan are asking is, how can a killer be in two places at the same time?

Two crime scenes. Two multiple murders. USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series Two multiple murders that had too much in common to be mere coincidence. Cherise Brown, her small daughter Shevron, her husband Earl. The only survivor, eight year-old Leroy who witnessed the whole thing. His story, that his father broke his sister's neck, his mother stabbed his father in the back and his dad, before dying, in a kind of berserker rage, took the knife and killed his mother. Four years later Leroy Brown is murdered along with his adoptive sister, Lea. He is stabbed in the back, while his sister's throat is cut, in a tool shed in the back yard of his adoptive family. The only survivor, his adoptive brother, Marcus Mitchell, now trapped in a catatonic depression, unable to move or speak, unable to tell anybody his story. When the mysterious Sonia Laplant brings new evidence, and Stone and Dehan begin to investigate, they soon discover that not only are the two murders intimately linked, they are impossible to explain. Because the killer simply could not have been there...

Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence...or is it? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series The Cold Cases team at the 43rd Precinct in the Bronx tend to focus on homicides. But now, Detective John Stone, head of the team, is curious about a two year-old rape case. A rape case where Sadie Byrne got HIV, turned out to be a rapid progressor and died of AIDS within a year. She never named her attacker. In New York law that did not constitute homicide. What did constitute homicide was what happened to Chuck Inglewood, when somebody slipped into his house and, with a razor sharp blade, cut through the veins and the arteries in his underarms and his inner thighs, and left him to bleed to death. Why he was murdered was a mystery nobody could solve. Why he didn't fight back was a deeper mystery. Nothing connected the two cases, except for the simple fact that Chuck Inglewood was Sadie Byrne's uncle. A coincidence? Detectives Stone and Dehan think not, but not even they are prepared for the dark web of deceit, betrayal and murder they were about to unravel...

The cops at the 43rd called it the unsolvable case. USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series October, 2010, Sally Jones had been stabbed in the heart in her apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, in the Bronx. Her coat was on the back of her chair. Her shoes were beside her bed, her clothes were neatly folded, and she was dead under the sheets. The killer had removed Sally's hands and feet and departed, leaving no trace - except the dismembered body. October, 2019, as the national media focuses on the 43rd's unbroken record in cold cases, Detective John Stone, head the unit, decides to tackle the case. But he and Dehan are soon to discover that this is a case like no other: who were the visitors who came to see her before her death? What was their connection with the shadowy Sacred Brotherhood of Christ? And did her brother, Captain Ewan Jones, seek to help her - or murder her? It soon begins to look like this is indeed the case they will never crack. And what, Dehan wants to know, happened to the Mustang?

...so who killed Debbie Smith? USA TODAY & Amazon 2-million copy bestselling author BLAKE BANNER is at his best in this mystifying crime series There hadn't been a crime in Dexter, upstate New York, since 1865. It was a long time coming, but when it came, on the 21st September, 2012, it was ugly. It was murder. It was the murder of a seventeen year-old girl, beaten, raped and strangled, then stabbed in the heart with a hunting knife. The DNA recovered from the corpse was contaminated and corrupted, but the DNA recovered from her clothes at home was clear. It was her stepfather's, just like the fingerprints on her arms and her face where she had been beaten. It should heave been an open and shut case, but there was a problem. When seventeen year-old Debbie was being murdered, her step father was drinking beer with the deputy. So who killed Debbie Smith? Seven years after the murder, the sheriff of Franklin County wants an answer. And he's heard that the 43rd in the Bronx has a team who specialize in cracking cold cases. But as the fall sets in in upstate new York, this case may be just too cold to crack. Or too hot...