Alex Rourke Series

Boston private investigator Alex Rourke has had to overcome personal tragedy and the emotional trauma it's caused to him before. But that's nothing to what he faces when the disappearance of a young man from a tough part of town takes him to the back country of northern Vermont. Adam Webb wasn't the first person to vanish in this stretch of the Green Mountains, and he won't be the last. Ghost towns, drug trafficking, blood and violence - all secrets buried beneath the stark, clean white of the January snows. With everything Alex holds dear either taken from him or quickly slipping through his grasp, keeping his sanity - and his life - will mean getting to the root of the evil dwelling in the frozen state. If he still wants either of those things, that is... This novel is the first book in the newly-reworked Alex Rourke series of stories. The original was published by Penguin in 2003, but this version from 2012 has been very heavily re-edited and improved. Praise for John Rickards: "Rickards is a master of tension and pacing. In Rourke he has created a brilliant anti-hero lead on a par with John Connolly's Charlie Parker." - Crimespree Magazine "Rickards is one author who doesn't pull punches." - Spinetingler "Rickards is definitely one to watch." - Peter Robinson (Watching The Dark, Aftermath)

Your mistake costs a young girl seven years of her life. How far would you go to put that right? Cody Williams was never charged with a string of child abductions and murders across New England, but everyone knows he was the man behind them. While the remains of some of his victims have been found down the years, several are still out there, buried in the Massachusetts wilds. Now Cody's dying and the families want their children's bodies recovered. And he'll talk, but only to the man who put him away, former FBI agent Alex Rourke. It's an unpleasant task for Rourke, but it gets far worse when he finds out that one of the victims might not have been killed at all, as he and everyone else had assumed. That she might still be alive, seven years later, still held captive. That Williams might not have acted alone. That by bringing down Cody, Alex gave the true villain free rein. Alex gambled his soul on Cody's guilt when he was in the Bureau, and it looks like he bet wrong. Now he could buy the lost girl's freedom with his own, but will he? And if not, can he find her true captor and make up in some small way for the mistakes he made seven years ago, or will he - and she - die in the attempt? The Darkness Inside: Writer's Cut is the second book in the reworked and updated series of Alex Rourke novels. The original was published by Penguin in 2007, but this version from 2012 has been heavily re-edited and (hopefully) improved. Praise for John Rickards: "Rickards is a master of tension and pacing. In Rourke he has created a brilliant anti-hero lead on a par with John Connolly's Charlie Parker." - Crimespree Magazine "Rickards is one author who doesn't pull punches." - Spinetingler "Rickards is definitely one to watch." - Peter Robinson (Watching The Dark, Aftermath)

Twelve people. One night. No way out. Troubled private detective Alex Rourke comes to Tennessee mountain country on a thin lead to a past killing, the deaths covered up and unavenged. When the night comes down and people start dying, it's not just those around him he's looking to save in the storm-blasted valley in the middle of nowhere; he's desperately trying to hold on to his own crumbling sanity as he teeters on the edge of a complete psychotic break. Trapped in the run-down rest stop at the valley's heart, killers both outside and in, nowhere safe and no one to turn to, Alex is going to have to sort the real from the imagined, truth from fiction, fast if anyone's going to live to see morning... Originally released by Penguin in 2008, this 'writer's cut' version has been almost completely rewritten from the ground up to turn it into the story it should've been, and not the story it was. PRAISE FOR JOHN RICKARDS: "Rickards is a master of tension and pacing. In Rourke he has created a brilliant anti-hero lead on a par with John Connolly’s Charlie Parker." - Crimespree Magazine "Rickards is one author who doesn’t pull punches." - Spinetingler

Phil Durand is a low level functionary within one of Boston's organized crime outfits. A delivery driver, nothing more. When his girlfriend Evie goes missing three days before they were due to leave town together to start a better, clean, life down in Florida, he turns to the only man he knows with a reputation for helping guys like him... Alex Rourke was once a respected investigator, first with the FBI and then in the private sector. Now he battles a long-term mental illness that's seen him slide from doing respectable work to ekeing out a living helping those with no one else to turn to. Durand's missing girlfriend looks like just a bread-and-butter job for him and his sardonic, secretive assistant Kayleigh. But they soon find that something's very wrong with what they've been told. Has Evie genuinely been missing for a few days? Was she really Durand's girlfriend? Is their client lying, or deranged? And how does what happened to the missing woman tie in to the outfit Durand works for, not to mention a rival boss in a neighboring part of town? The race is on to find Evie, find the truth, and untangle the knots in Durand's story before one side, or another, does it for them... Praise for John Rickards: "Rickards is a master of tension and pacing. In Rourke he has created a brilliant anti-hero lead on a par with John Connolly's Charlie Parker." - Crimespree Magazine "Rickards is one author who doesn't pull punches." - Spinetingler "Rickards is definitely one to watch." - Peter Robinson (Watching The Dark, Aftermath)