Brash Books Authors of Mystery, Thriller, Espionage and Crime Fiction

Tom Ardies

Tom Ardies was a reporter and columnist for the Vancouver Sun during the 60’s, a thriller novelist in the 1970s & 80s, and an acclaimed crime writer (under the pseudonym “Jack Trolley”) in the 1990s. His spy novel Kosygin Is Coming, was adapted into the movie called Russian Roulette starring George Segal and Denholm Elliott. He died in 2020 at the age of 89.

Noreen Ayres

Before CSI or NCIS, there was forensic specialist Smokey Brandon – the ex-stripper and ex-cop who cares too much in Noreen Ayres’ The Juan Doe Murders and other novels. In Smokey, Ayres has created an indelible character as sunny, multi-layered and complex as the Southern California world where her unforgettable stories of murder take place.

Leo W. Banks

Boston-born Leo W. Banks worked as a reporter for years, winning more than 38 statewide, national and international journalism awards. His first novel, Double Wide, won two Spur awards from the Western Writers of America — for Best First Novel of 2018 and Best Western Contemporary Novel. True West magazine called it the Western crime novel of the year. The sequel, Champagne Cowboys, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. He lives in Arizona.

James Barry

James Barry is the pseudonym of a New York Times bestselling novelist writing with a bold new voice, but with the same breathtaking plotting and relentless suspense that made his previous books global hits and acclaimed Hollywood movies. The author image here is computer-generated.

David Brierley

David Brierley was born in 1936 in Durban, South Africa. He has also lived in Canada, England, France and Greece. Travel is in his bones. After taking a degree at Oxford, he worked as a teacher at a French lycée and then in advertising in London, which is when the first of 13 novels were published. He lives in England with his wife Jill in a small town with a name that always raises a smile: Chipping Sodbury.

Keith Bruton

Keith Bruton is a writer from Dublin, Ireland. He studied at Technological University Dublin receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Business and Management in 2014. He lived in Toronto, Canada for four years. He currently resides in Dublin with his partner.

Craig Faustus Buck

Macavity Award winning writer Craig Faustus Buck has been a journalist (Sports Illustrated, New York Times, etc.) an acclaimed TV screenwriter (Magnum PI, Simon & Simon, V) and a New York Times bestselling non-fiction author who has brought that wide experience to Go Down Hard, his incredibly original debut crime novel of sex, thugs, and rock-n-roll, published by Brash Books.

Jack Bunker

Jack Bunker is trial lawyer who brings his wide experience — including stints working at the U.S. Department of Justice, as a clerk for a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, and as legal editor for Thomson Reuters in Dubai — to his brilliant first novel TRUE GRIFT, which earned a coveted *starred* review from Publishers Weekly.

Robin Burcell

Robin Burcell is a New York Times bestselling author, veteran police officer, and former hostage negotiator. Her work includes four “Sam & Remi Fargo adventures” co-authored with Clive Cussler and many other novels, including Face Of A Killer, The Bone Chamber, and The Last Good Place, a novel that continues, and updates, Carolyn Weston’s Krug & Kellogg series, the basis for the hit TV show The Streets of San Francisco.

Jim Cirni

Jim Cirni, a first generation Italian-American, drew inspiration for his mafia crime thrillers from his roots in Brooklyn, New York.  Cirni served as a paratrooper in the 82^nd United States Airborne during the late 1950s and spent the following forty years working in public accounting, writing novels in his leisure.  He passed in 2004.

James Cody

James P. Cody was the pseudonym of Peter T. Rohrbach, a former Catholic priest of the Carmelite Order who lived, prayed and served in a Washington D.C. rectory until he left the priesthood in 1966. He wrote several other non-fiction books under his real name.

Max Allan Collins

Max Allan Collins is the 2017 Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, a Lifetime Achievement Award winner from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the author of many books, including “Road to Perdition,” which became the Oscar winning film, and the Quarry novels, the basis for the hit TV series.

Michael Craft

Michael Craft is the author of the acclaimed “Mark Manning” series of mystery novels, three of which were finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. More recently, his 2019 mystery, ChoirMaster, was a Gold Winner of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. Desert Getaway, the upcoming first novel in his new Dante & Jazz series, is based on his Palm Springs Noir short story VIP Check-In, praised as “delightful” by the Los Angeles Times.

Ralph Dennis

Among crime writers, the late Ralph Dennis is considered a master of the genre who never received the recognition he deserved. He’s the author of the thirteen legendary Hardman novels, and six standalone thrillers, including A Talent For Killing, The War Heist, and Dust in the Heart. He died in 1988.

Robert Dunn

Robert Dunn is the author of Dead Man’s Badge, the gritty story of a felon who takes the place of his dead twin brother, the Chief of Police of a violent border town. He passed away in 2021.

Dawn Farnham

Aussie Dawn Farnham now lives and writes on Noongar land in Perth, Western Australia but for most of her life lived in Europe, East Asia, and Singapore. She is the author of six historical novels and has a Creative Writing PhD researching and writing local women’s experiences of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Tokyo Time is her first foray into the historical crime genre.

Herb Fisher

Herb Fisher was a beloved high school teacher and football coach… and was the author of four novels in the Doctor Death series.

Bob Forward

Bob Forward has written everything from film scripts to animated television series, and that cinematic expertise is evident in his novels The Owl and The Owl 2, Scarlet Serenade. These intense, high-octane noir thrillers follow vigilante-for-hire Alexander L’Hiboux, a man who never sleeps and never stops hunting his criminal prey. Hop on board for a literary thrill ride.

Michael Genelin

Michael Genelin is a former Los Angeles Head Deputy District Attorney in the Hardcore Gang Division and the author of five acclaimed novels about Slovakian female police inspector Jana Matinova, including his latest, For The Dignified Dead, from Brash Books.

Parnell Hall

Parnell Hall is the Edgar, Shamus and Agatha Award nominted author of 20 Stanley Hastings mysteries, 19 Puzzle Lady Mysteries, 6 Steve Winslow courtroom thrillers, and 5 NY times bestselling novels co-authored with Stuart Woods. His final novel, Chasing Jack, was published in 2021, shortly before his death from COVID-19.

Alfred Harris

Alfred “Alf” Harris was a prolific screenwriter (Barnaby Jones, The Starlost, Wild Wild West, Mission Impossible etc.) and the author of two novels, Baroni and The Joseph File, both re-published by Brash Books. He died in 1998.

Gar Anthony Haywood

Gar Anthony Haywood is the three-time Shamus Award winning author of Man Eater and Firecracker, earning rave, starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus, and favorable comparisons to Elmore Leonard for his dark humor and fast-paced thrills

Harry Hunsicker

Harry Hunsicker is the best-selling author of eight crime thrillers and numerous short stories. He is the former executive vice of the Mystery Writers of America, and his fiction has been short-listed for both the Shamus and Thriller Awards. He also wrote the screenplay for an award-winning short crime film. Hunsicker lives in Dallas with his wife, Alison.

Tom Kakonis

Tom Kakonis was hailed by critics nationwide as the heir-apparent to Elmore Leonard… and for good reason. His stunning thrillers Treasure Coast, Michigan Roll, and Criss Cross, among others, blend dark humor with gritty storytelling for compelling, and innovative crime noir capers packed with unique, sharply drawn characters and shocking twists. He passed away in 2018.

Tony Knighton

Tony is the author of the collection Happy Hour and Other Philadelphia Cruelties and the novels Three Hours Past Midnight and A Few Days Away. He is a lieutenant in the Philadelphia Fire Department, a thirty-six-year veteran. He’s trying to see if he likes the job.

Stan Lee

Bestselling thriller author Stan R. Lee used his political and advertising careers to inject his books with authenticity. His espionage novel Dunn’s Conundrum is a prophetic story about a US intelligence organization, while The God Project explores a top secret CIA project. Both ahead of their time, Lee’s spy thrillers are darkly-funny, intensely-riveting and undeniably thought-provoking.

Dick Lochte

Dick Lochte burst onto the crime-writing scene with Sleeping Dog, which was a finalist for every major award in the genre, won the Nero Wolfe Award, and was named one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Booksellers Association. His many other popular crime novels are every bit as good…and as beloved.

Jack Lynch

Jack Lynch modeled many aspects of his legendary private eye Peter Bragg on himself. He worked as a reporter for many years before going on to write eight thrilling novels in the Bragg mystery series – earning one Edgar Award nomination and two Shamus Award nominations, along with a loyal following of future crime writers.

Jon Messmann

Jon Messman was the author of over 100 novels, including The Revenger and The Handyman series of crime novels. As John Sharpe, he created the hugely successful Trailsman series of westerns that is still going strong today.

Geoffrey Miller

Geoffrey Miller caused a sensation, and earned comparisons to Hammett and Chandler, with his debut thriller, The Black Glove, which earned him an Edgar Award nomination for the Best First Mystery Novel. He passed away in 2019.

Margaret Moseley

Margaret Moseley is the author of the Edgar Award finalist Bonita Faye, Millicent LeSueur, and the three Honey Huckleberry Mysteries: Grinning in his Mashed Potatoes, The Fourth Steven, and A Little Traveling Music Please. 

Dallas Murphy

Edgar-award nominee Dallas Murphy is the author of the wild crime novel Apparent Wind and the acclaimed Artie Deemer series – which kicks off with Lover Man, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Filled with conspiracy and corruption, Murphy’s fast-paced and funny mysteries are rollicking adventures you won’t forget.

AW Mykel

Barbara Neely

Barbara Neely was the 2020 Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster and the multiple award-winning writer and much-admired community activist best known for her innovative and popular Blanche White mystery novels, which won the Agatha, Macavity, and Anthony Awards. She died in 2020.

Maxine O'Callaghan

Maxine O’Callaghan introduced detective Delilah West in a story in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine that was so good, it created the female PI genre and blazed the trail that Sue Grafton and others would follow. The Delilah West books have earned her the Private Eye Writers of America lifetime achievement award and recognition as a ground-breaking legend of crime fiction.

Stephen OShea

Stephen O’Shea is the author of five non-fiction books dealing with European travel and history, including The Perfect Heresy, The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi & Beyond, and The Friar of Carcassonne: Revolt Against the Inquisition in the Last Days of the Cathars. He currently resides in Providence, Rhode Island.

Lewis Perdue

Lewis Perdue is an entrepreneur, technologist, scientist, professor, author, publisher, journalist, and outdoorsman and New York Times best-selling author of 22 published books. His plots grow out of a scientific education, investigative reporting of prominent crimes and felonies in Congress and the White House. He currently performs a variety of services for a private global intelligence firm and a major U.S. law enforcement agency.

Gilbert Ralston

Gilbert Ralston (January 5, 1912 – March 18, 1999) is best known as a screenwriter. His feature film credits include Willard and Kona Coast. He created the TV series The Wild Wild West and wrote for many shows, includig Laredo, Star Trek, Ben Casey, Hawaii Five-O, The Big Valley and Gunsmoke. His novels, besides the Dakota series, include The Deadly, Deadly Art and The Frightful Sin of Cisco Newman.

William Reynolds

William J. Reynolds, a native of Omaha, has been a magazine editor, an advertising and marketing executive, a college instructor,a communications director, as well as the author of a number of books. His début detective novel, The Nebraska Quotient, was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.

Mike Ripley

Mike Ripley is a multi-award winning British author of more than 30 novels, including the continuing adventures of Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion. He’s also prolific reviewer of crime fiction and wrote Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, an acclaimed history of British thriller ficion.

W.L. Ripley

W.L. Ripley is the author of the acclaimed Wyatt Storme series and the Cole Springer novels, earning him richly deserved comparisons to Robert B. Parker, John D. MacDonald and James Lee Burke. Brash is proud to be publishing the four Wyatt Storme novels.

Mark Rogers

Mark Rogers is an award-winning travel writer. His work regularly appears in USA Today and other media outlets.  He’s the author of Koreatown Blues.

Jim Sanderson

Jim Sanderson is the award-winning author of seven novels, including the widely praised El Camino Del Rio and La Mordida, both featuring US Border Patrol Officer Dolph Martinez. Sanderson is such a versatile author that he has been characterized as a “working class, Texas writer,” a “rural Southwestern literary writer,” and a “literary mystery writer.” We think “a great writer” pretty much sums him up.

John Sanford

John B. Sanford was a screenwriter and author who wrote 24 books. A one-time member of the Communist Party, after he and his wife Marguerite Roberts refused to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, they were blacklisted and unable to work in Hollywood for nearly a decade. He died in 2003 at age 98.

Jimmy Sangster

Jimmy Sangster was an acclaimed and prolific screenwriter, director, and novelist. His many crime novels include Touchfeather, Snowball, The Spy Killer, and Foreign Exchange. He died in 2011.

Craig Smith

An award-winning advertising creative director, Craig Smith took a year off to write the Edgar-nominated Ladystinger, as well as the book’s screen adaptation, Scam, which starred Christopher Walken. Since then, he has alternated between advertising and screenwriting, with four movies produced from his scripts to date.

Mark Smith

Mark Smith is the author of The Death of the Detective, the runaway New York Times Bestseller and beloved National Book Award finalist that is one of the most admired, compelling and unforgettable crime novels ever written.

Gary Stewart

Gary L. Stewart (1937-2018) was born in Salt Lake City and raised as a Mormon. He held a doctorate in theater criticism from the University of Iowa and spent 36 years in academia. He taught theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (UMASS), and then at Indiana State University (ISU). He wrote two “Gabriel Utley” crime novels, several plays and Avenging Angel, an unpublished western that became a feature film starring Tom Berenger, Charlton Heston, and James Coburn.

Michael Stone

There’s a reason the widely-acclaimed, Shamus Award-nominated Streeter series is so believable: Michael Stone has been a working private detective for 25 years. He’s also a former award-winning investigative reporter and uses his hard-earned knowledge to bring a unique, cutting edge to his crime noir fiction featuring Streeter, a lone-wolf PI unlike any other in print.

Andy Straka

Andy Straka is the Shamus Award winning and Anthony & Agatha Award nominated author of the Frank Pavlicek PI series and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of “ten rising stars” in crime fiction.

Phoef Sutton

Phoef Sutton has won the Golden Globe, the Peabody, and two Emmys for his brilliant TV writing for shows like Cheers and Boston Legal…so the National Book Award and the Pulitzer are surely in his future for his novels. His books include Crush, The Dead Man: The Midnight Special, Wicked Charms (with Janet Evanovich), and Fifteen Minutes to Live, a twisty, funny, thrilling, and utterly Brash thriller.

Doug Swanson

Doug Swanson is the author of five crime novels and two non-fiction books. His first novel, Big Town, won the John Creasey Award from the British Crime Writers Association and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best first novel. Swanson was for many years a reporter and editor at the Dallas Morning News. He has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and was a Knight Fellow in Journalism at Stanford University. He currently teaches writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Ted Thackrey

Ted Thackrey Jr. was a Korean War vet, an author and newspaper reporter who, after stints at several newspapers, ended up in 1968 at the Los Angeles Times, where he became known over the next two decades for his colorful news stories, columns, and obituaries. His cult classic The Preacher was an Edgar Award finalist and led to two sequels and a feature film.

Phillip Thompson

A native of rural east Mississippi, Phillip Thompson served in combat as a Marine, covered capital murder cases as a journalist, and wrote speeches for top military leaders in the Pentagon. He has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Mississippi and Virginia, and his journalistic work has been featured in newspapers across the Deep South and the East Coast.

Jack Trolley

“Jack Trolley” is a pseudonym used by author Tom Ardies. 

David Wagoner

David Wagoner (1926- 2021) was a two-time National Book Award finalist, an acclaimed poet, respected novelist and a beloved University of Washington professor. He won many prestigious awards, including two Pushcart Prizes, and was the author of ten novels, all of which we are re-issuing here  and under our Cutting Edge imprint, and many poetry collections. He was also the editor of Poetry Northwest until 2002 served as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978.

Jane Waterhouse

Jane is scriptwriter, award-winning playwright, and the author of four thrillers, including Graven Images, the first of three adventures featuring true-crime writer Garner Quinn.

Carolyn Weston

Carolyn Weston is the author of the three, ground-breaking police procedurals that became the hit TV series The Streets of San Francisco.