Deacon Bishop Mysteries Series

When a scruffy ex-boxer picks up P.I. Deacon Bishop at the south Texas airport, Bishop worries that he's made a long trip for nothing. Because Leon Huggins doesn't look like he could pay a bar tab, let alone a detective's retainer. But Leon isn't the client--not at first, anyway. Leon's brother is supposed to be the client but then Eli Huggins ends up dead. Bishop can't walk away.

It sounds like an easy job--trail a woman from the airport to her destination and call in where she went. In fact, the job sounds too easy for hardboiled P.I. Deacon Bishop. Still, he needs the money. So... Unfortunately, Bishop is right. Before he can say 'sting,' he's caught in a web of deadly redheads, angry terrorists, murder and... honeybees.

Private detective Deacon Bishop is feeling his age when he's awakened in the middle of the night by a low-rent hoodlum. But the criminal, Davey Kenyon, has something Bishop wants so bad he can smell it--evidence against the Portello crime family. Before the two can reach a bargain, though, Kenyon is gunned down outside Bishop's apartment and Bishop finds himself in the familiar position of being yanked in front of the police--a position made less comfortable because of Bishop's certainty that some in the police department are very much in the pay of the Portello family. Bishop arranges a couple of PI jobs for himself looking for missing people--people who seem definitely connected to whatever is going on. He has a hard time believing the evidence he's turning up. Surely even Dominic Portello, the idiot brother in the crime family, wouldn't be stupid enough to get involved with Satanism? Yet that's exactly what Bishop seems to be discovering. Then there's the mystery of the tattoos. Bishop keeps pushing, looking for something that will allow him to put a permanent end to the Portello family crime wave, but at the back of his mind he's absolutely certain of one thing--finding evidence may be tough, but staying alive long enough for that evidence to be useful is bound to be a whole lot tougher. Author Michael Paulson creates a wonderful character in Deacon Bishop--a man who's hard-bitten but who, nevertheless, maintains a peculiar sense of honor as he deals with criminals, the police, and rich families gone bad. Bishop is man enough to desire some of the beautiful women who throw themselves his way, but cynical enough to suspect that few of them are motivated by simple desire for his aging body. If you enjoy the hardboiled action of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, you'll enjoy the Michael Paulson's Deacon Bishop. Fans of hard-boiled mystery fiction (like me) will definitely want to grab DEADLY AGE. It's a page-turning thrill-ride.

Private Detective Deacon Bishop doesn't especially like the missing person case he's assigned. For one thing, he's afraid his client will kill the man if he finds him. For another, something just doesn't feel right. But Bishop's qualms about this case are nothing compared to the troubles that fall on him when a rival detective arrives in his office with his gun out. Bishop finds himself embroiled in murder, blackmail, and what looks like it might be the beginning of a shakeout in the local organized crime outfit as the Portello family may finally be losing its grip. Bishop goes to work, alternating questions with hard fists, to find both the missing musician and to follow clues that might lead to mob leader Frank Portello's missing ledgers. If he can find those--along with the code book that opens their secret, Bishop actually stands a chance of achieving his fondest dream (even fonder than bagging every blond, brunette and redhead in Austin, Texas)--putting the Portello crime family out of business and on death row. Of course, staying alive while he's looking isn't easy--and Bishop quickly piles up a large number of enemies including candidates for governor, mobsters, and a truly dangerous pool-hall operator. Author Michael Paulson continues his Deacon Bishop hard-boiled detective series with an action-filled zinger. Bishop lurches from danger to danger, his body carrying more and more damage as he survives but doesn't prosper. Bishop cracks wise, thinks with his fists, and provides a cynical look at Texas politics, corrupt police, greed, and shades of gray. Paulson is an active part of a small group of authors bringing back the hard-boiled detective story. As DEADLY TRADE shows, the genre has a lot of life left in it. If you enjoy the hardboiled action of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ross MacDonald's Lew Archer, you'll enjoy the Michael Paulson's Deacon Bishop.

If he hadn't turned into the rest stop for a nature call, Deacon Bishop never would have heard about the hundred million dollars--or gotten involved with his favorite Mafia family, the Portellos. But he did make the stop--and gave a lift to the woman who claimed to be a Fed, claimed to simply need a ride into town, claimed she was in no danger. When a sideswipe drove Bishop's car off the road a few miles later, leaving him injured, his car exploded, and the woman, Helen Martinis dead, with gunshots from Bishop's gun through her head, Bishop was involved. He could have done without the dead woman and the injuries, but a hundred million dollars is worth a bit of grief, and the private investigation business doesn't often turn up that kind of money. Bishop's search for the truth and the loot puts him into contact with the Portello family--including the beautiful Rita, who's spent a lot of time trying to get her hands on that hundred million dollars. But Helen is only one of the dead bodies Bishop encounters--it seems that everyone involved with the heist of the cash stolen from the Chicago mob is ending up dead. When Rita vanishes, apparently the next victim, Rita's dangerous brother Sal gives Bishop an ultimatum--find Rita, alive, or Bishop dies, too. Bishop has to play a dangerous game. Pretending he has a line on the money is the only way to keep Rita alive, but pretending to have the money makes him a huge target--and just about all the gangsters in Austin, Texas, come gunning for him. Author Michael Paulson delivers another hard-hitting hard-boiled mystery featuring aging but still tough private detective Deacon Bishop. Those who've been following this series will definitely enjoy the way Bishop's relationship with Rita Portello unfolds (and get a chuckle from the way Bishop misses some obvious clues there). Although part of a series, enjoying DEADLY TURN doesn't depend on reading the earlier novels first.

Even detectives need to pay the rent, which is why Deacon Bishop found himself spending nights taking pictures of an unfaithful wife and her lover. Considering the wife’s lifestyle, it wasn’t a complete surprise when she turned up missing but Bishop agrees to take the job of finding her... if she is anywhere to be found. What Bishop doesn’t expect is that the task of finding a missing woman will immerse him in an insurance scam, a gambling den that doubles as a church, or a run-in with the Portello crime family which controls so much of Texas. Bishop picks up his first clues when he meets up with a one-legged skateboarder who thinks he is the Shadow. The Shadow may know but his reality Is far from Bishop. While Bishop believes the little guy saw a murder, exactly who was murdered and who did the job isn’t easy to make out. One thing does seem clear--more murders seem likely and Bishop just might become one of the victims. Author Michael Paulson continues his Deacon Bishop detective series with an exciting and darkly funny novel. Bishop’s world is one of slimy crooks and almost equally slimy cops--and Bishop himself is one of the most morally ambivalent characters in the story, willing to take a bribe to look the other way (as long as what he’s ignoring isn’t too serious by his not-very-elevated moral code), certainly willing to plant evidence to implicate the guilty, and ready to deal with the devil (in the form of crime boss Salvator Portello) when it serves his purposes. Bishop is a classic hard-drinking, hard-smoking, skirt-chasing hard-boiled detective but there’s definitely a 21st century sense of reality to his world.