UPDATE
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THUNDER MOON RELEASED BY FIVE STAR MYSTERIES
Thunder Moon, the second book in Richard Helms' Judd Wheeler Mystery series, has been published by the Five Star Mysteries imprint of Gale/Cengage Publishing! A top recruit for the Pythons pro football team is hacked to death in Prosperity, triggering a chain of events that leads police chief Judd Wheeler to a deadly encounter with the most evil adversary of his twenty-year career! Edited by Deni Dietz, the book has already garnered sparkling reviews. You can read an absolutely free excerpt HERE!
And, you can buy a copy HERE!
RICK HELMS DIVES HEAD-FIRST INTO EBOOK WORLD!
In November 2010, Rick Helms revived his Back Alley Books imprint to publish his first all-electronic title, with The Daedalus Deception!
Available for both Amazon Kindle and Nook e-readers, The Daedalus Deception is a fast-paced thriller set in Savannah, featuring a new private eye character named Hollis Dayton. In this one, Hollis is approached by a desperate man named David Proctor, whose wife has disappeared, along with every trace that they had been married, or for that matter that she had ever existed at all.
As Hollis Dayton searches for the missing spouse, it becomes apparent that her vanishing act is just the prelude to a monstrous terrorist plot that could make the events of 9/11 pale in comparison!
Read a totally free excerpt HERE!
Buy a copy for Amazon Kindle HERE! Nook users can get one HERE!
"If I had read this on vacation, I would have burnt to a crisp in the deck chair because there is absolutely no way I could have put it down long enough to walk back up to the hotel!...If you like the mind-blowing, suspense-filled storytelling of Mark Gimenez and Harlan Coben, you will love The Daedalus Deception...Richard Helms outwrites himself, AGAIN!"
-Jann Breisacher, Amazon.com
"Richard Helms has written a damned fine book! Helms twists the plot like a strand of DNA without ever cheating the reader out of excitement or emotional depth. One of my favorite reads of the year! A big thumbs up for Thunder Moon!"
-Reed Farrel Coleman, three-time Shamus Award winning author of Innocent Monster
"With lots of suspects, lots of secondary characters,
and enough plot threads to weave a hanky, the second
Wheeler series entry is busy. But, amazingly, three-time
Shamus Award nominee Helms keeps it all clear for
readers as he moves the various plot elements toward a
satisfying finale...Fun reading!"
-Wes Lukowsky, ALA Booklist Online
“...An exciting police procedural...The story line is
fast-paced from the opening eviction to the final
immaculate interception. Wheeler is the focus who holds
the plot together...he methodically recreates the crime
scenes as a diligent, intelligent and caring cop.”
-Harriet Klausner, The Mystery Gazette
“...Here's a homegrown story by a homegrown writer who
knows his way around a Southern summer. Richard Helms
can talk about heat the way an Eskimo can talk about
snow, so his tale of deception and murder in the small
town of Prosperity, N.C., has an authentic feel,
especially if you read it outdoors (in the shade, of
course!) on one of these 100-degree-heat-index days.
Police Chief Judd Wheeler wades through the heat from
crime scenes, to witness interviews, to a traveling
preacher's tent, piecing together clues to the identity
of a murderer hiding in plain sight. Along the way,
Helms gives us vignettes of the changing landscape of
the South (former farm fields "carpet-bombed with
starter castles"), and the parts that don't change as
well: kudzu, summer vegetables, summer storms”
-Salem Macknee, The Charlotte (NC) Observer (7/10/2011)
“Thunder Moon is not a cozy mystery with murders solved
over afternoon tea and scones—the good, the bad, and the
ugly are frequently dispatched with ice picks,
explosions, fires, and even lightning...While the
storyline is riveting, the humorous narration also
captures readers’ attention. ...Unlike most criminal
investigators, Judd Wheeler lets the reader know of
other concerns besides bagging murderers. He warns about
the consequences of overdeveloping former farmland,
forests, and pastures. Judd seems to suggest that the
sterility of the New South’s affluence has hardened its
inhabitants’ hearts, and perhaps made them more inclined
to greed and violence...Thunder Moon is enthusiastically
recommended for mystery lovers searching for a new kind
of sleuth, a sensitive yet hard-boiled cop with a social
conscience.”
-Mike Shinn, The Mooresville (NC) Weekly
RICK HELMS ELECTED SEMWA PRESIDENT!
In elections held in December, members of the Southeast Chapter of Mystery Writers of America elected Rick Helms as Chapter President for 2011! Read more about it HERE!
RICHARD HELMS WINS THE 2011 ITW THRILLER AWARD!!!
It's been a big year for award nominations, and now for wins! The Gods for Vengeance Cry (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November 2010) picked up the International Thriller Writers Best Short Story Thriller Award at ThrillerFest in New York City! Read all about it HERE!
KILLER REVIEWS FOR SIX MILE CREEK!
"Six Mile Creek is the most engrossing crime novel I've read all year! This is a real story, with real characters. For me, that's as good as it gets!"
-Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award winning author of The Lock Artist
It's been a big month. My fourteenth novel, and second Judd Wheeler title (Thunder Moon) was released by Five Star Mysteries on June 17th, and went on sale at Amazon and all other online and brick/mortar booksellers on July 7th. I think this book is a corker! Do yourself a favor and check it out.
The first book in the series, Six Mile Creek, is still going strong! I've been very gratified by the critical response to it, and readers have been very complimentary. Hey, if you're going to pick up a copy of Thunder Moon, why not make it a two-fer and get a copy of Six Mile Creek while you're at it!
I'm already working on the third Judd Wheeler novel, with the working title Carolina Blue. A missing Prosperity couple and a brutal murder have factors in common that lead Chief Wheeler on a nightmare trip into an unexpectedly venal underworld, and a confrontation with a tragic decision he made thirty years earlier. This is going to be one of the good ones!
As I mentioned, Elaine and I just returned from a cruise-tour of Monaco, Italy, Greece, and Croatia. It was the first trip to the Continent for both of us, and a real eye-opener. Along the way, we had stops in Venice, Rome, Monte Carlo, Florence, Naples, Santorini, Mykonos, Athens, Olympia, Corfu, and Split in Croatia. Spent two days in Rome and three in Venice. I had a Bellini cocktail in Harry's Bar in Venice, a drink invented by Ernest Hemingway in the bar he made famous! It was a blast! I fell in love with Corfu, and Elaine and I have stated, only half-jokingly, that we should retire there in a few years. If nothing else, I got some great ideas for an international thriller. Now I just need to go back and gather more material for it!
I'm extremely happy to report that my
standalone procedural novel featuring a forensic psychologist who has
Asperger's Syndrome, a type of high-functioning autism, has been purchased
by Five Star/Cengage for publication in the spring of 2012. Any resemblance
between this protagonist and myself is purely coincidental. I think. Keep an
eye peeled for The Unresolved Seventh.
For you ebook fanatics (and publishing statistics indicate that your numbers
are growing exponentially every day), I have a new book available
exclusively in the Kindle and Nook formats. I've been a huge believer in
ebook technology for some time, so now I'm putting my money where my mouth
is. The Daedalus Deception is a high-tech thriller, which I published
under my Back Alley Books imprint for both Kindle and Nook e-readers at the
end of November 2010. David Proctor, a computer systems analyst in Savannah,
appears in private investigator Hollis Dayton's office with a strange tale.
His wife of several months, a woman with agoraphobia, has disappeared along
with every trace that they were ever married, or for that matter that she
even existed. The police think that Proctor is working some kind of
insurance scam, because they can't find any evidence to support his
allegations that Barbara Proctor must have been kidnapped. As Hollis Dayton
investigates the disappearance, she uncovers a diabolical plan aimed at the
heart of America's air transportation system!
For those of you who have been asking when the next Pat Gallegher novel will
come out, I wish I had an adequate answer for you. The fifth book in this
series is in progress - but the going is very slow. Entitled Paid In
Spades, this novel proves that you should be very careful what you
promise. While trying to find a missing friend, Gallegher becomes involved
in smuggling and runs afoul of the Brazilian mob in New Orleans. There's a
strong ecological backstory in this tale, which should be finished later
this year. As you may have read above, my Pat Gallegher short story
The Gods For Vengeance Cry (which also features an appearance by Six
Mile Creek and Thunder Moon protagonist Judd Wheeler) appeared in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's November 2010 issue, and was
subsequently nominated for the Derringer Award, the Macavity Award, and the
Thriller Award, winning the latter.
Eamon Gold fans, I haven't forgotten you! An Eamon Gold short story, The
Gospel According to Gordon Black, appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of the
Thrilling Detective Website. It won the 2008 SMFS Derringer Award in the
4001-8000 Word Category! Another Eamon Gold short, Silicon Kings,
appeared in my own webzine, The Back Alley, in the spring 2010 issue,
and was nominated for the Derringer Award in 2011.
In the mean time, I'm working on the third novel in the Shamus
Award-nominated Eamon Gold series, with the working title Brittle Karma. In
this one, Gold decides to work on spec, trying to recover the loot from a
twenty-year-old armored car robbery for the insurance. What he doesn't know
is that he isn't the only person looking for it, and the other guys are
willing to kill to get it away from him.
I need to take a moment to send out major
congratulations to Simon Wood, whose story The Frame Maker was
nominated for the Anthony Award this year. I'm very pleased about this,
because The Frame Maker was published in The Back Alley Webzine,
which I edit and publish. This is The Back Alley's first Anthony
Award nomination, and we wish Simon the very best of luck at the Anthony
Awards Banquet at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in September in
St. Louis, MO!
Finally, I've just finished writing the first novel featuring a new series
character, a Miami private eye named Cormac Loame. Set in late 1958, The
Mojito Coast takes place almost entirely in Havana at the very end of
the Batista regime. It includes a number of cameo appearances by the
celebrities, mobsters, and historical figures who populated Havana just
before the revolution. If you like your detective stories hardboiled with a
touch of noir, you want to run a stakeout on this one.
In my acceptance speech for the Thriller Award, I noted I originally wrote
The Gods For Vengeance Cry about twenty-six years ago. I
circulated it to all the major mystery magazines at that time, and it was
roundly rejected. As we all do, I moved on to the next project and stuffed
the story into a box in my office, where it eventually was forgotten. I ws
moving offices a couple of years ago, and ran across that box again. I read
the story, and realized that--despite some limitations due to my relative
inexperience at time I wrote it--it had pretty good bones. So, I rewrote it,
and rewrote it, and rewrote it again. Then I started sending it out, and
before I knew it the story was accepted by Janet Hutchings at Ellery
Queen's Mystery Magazine. The rest has been just one wild ride. The
lesson? Never give up. If a story has the right stuff, keep at it. Write,
write, write, submit, submit, submit. Most of all, keep reading and
learning.
Thanks for visiting my website. I hope you'll return again real soon!
R
THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF ITW THRILLER AWARD WINNER,
TWO-TIME DERRINGER AWARD WINNER,
THREE-TIME SHAMUS AWARD NOMINEE, AND MACAVITY AWARD NOMINEE
RICHARD HELMS
THE GODS FOR VENGEANCE CRY NOMINATED FOR THE MACAVITY AWARD!!!
Rick's story, The Gods For Vengeance Cry (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November 2010) has been nominated for the Mystery Readers International Macavity Award! Other finalists in the Best Short Story category include Doug Allyn, Dana Cameron, Keith Gilman, and G.M. Malliet. The Macavity Awards will be presented at the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention in St. Louis, MO, on September 15th.
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RICHARD HELMS RECEIVES TWO DERRINGER AWARD NOMINATIONS!!!
On March 1st, the Short Mystery Fiction Society announced that Richard Helms had received Derringer Award nominations in two different categories! His story Silicon Kings (The Back Alley Webzine, April 2010) was nominated in the Best Long Story (4001-8000 words) category. The Gods For Vengeance Cry, his story from the November 2010 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine was nominated in the Best Novelette Category (8001-17500 words). Unfortunately, he didn't win either award, but--as all authors know--it was an honor just to be nominated!
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Released in April 2010, Six Mile Creek introduces Judd Wheeler, the Chief of Police in tiny Prosperity, North Carolina, in a riveting tale of rural murder, deception, and betrayal.
Prosperity used to be just a wide spot in the road, a red-clay farming community inhabited by the descendents of settlers who had pioneered there three centuries earlier. Now, its rolling hills and bucolic charm have been discovered by urban residents of a nearby metropolis, and Judd Wheeler's hometown is transforming into a bedroom suburb. Class tensions between the long-time residents and the newcomers is accented by a third factor--the influx of illegal Mexican immigrants looking for work.
When a teenaged Mexican girl is found murdered on the banks of Six Mile Creek, the pressure cooker threatens to explode, and only Chief Judd Wheeler can relieve the pressure by finding the murderer!
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