Quill Gordon Mystery Series
About The Books
The Quill Gordon novels are mysteries in the classic tradition, with an emphasis on good stories and entertainment value. Set mostly in the small towns and countryside of the mountains of California, each book’s story plays out in a different location, with its own characters and sense of place.
Quill Gordon is a former college basketball star and stockbroker who finds himself pulled into the resolution of crimes in the communities he visits on his fly-fishing travels. Through these investigations, he finds himself learning about the aspects of the places that tourists don’t see. As word of his exploits grows, he is sometimes asked to look into suspicious situations as an unofficial private investigator. He accepts no fees and enjoys a certain freedom denied to licensed detectives.
While there is a progression of events and characters through the series, each book stands on its own, and the books can be read in any order. If pressed for a recommendation, the author usually suggests beginning with either Book 3 or Book 7.
Book #10
Rush a Gun
E-book available July 27,2022
“THE SWEET SMELL OF PROSPERITY.” That’s how the residents of the high-desert town of Liberty describe the pungent odors emanating from the A.H. Best fertilizer plant, the largest private employer in the remote, ruggedly scenic area. But with a new (and distant) corporate owner and negotiations coming up on a union contract, the community is fraught with anxiety as Quill Gordon and his sidekick Sam Akers arrive on a trout-fishing trip. After a company employee is shot to death while taking a boxful of confidential company documents to an investigative reporter, the tension kicks up another notch, and Gordon and Sam find themselves drawn into a situation that’s quickly becoming a national news story. When Gordon agrees to help with the investigation, the result is a shocking outcome, after which the community, its residents, and its largest employer will never be the same again.
The Series
Book 1: The McHenry Inheritance. A corpse by the trout stream. A family torn apart by a deathbed will change. A militia roaming the woods. You call this a vacation?
Book 2: Wash Her Guilt Away. Harry’s Riverside Lodge had a long and colorful history. The locked-room murder was merely the latest chapter.
Book 3: Not Death, But Love. The clues to the English teacher’s murder were in the words she wrote — in her family history and in her journal a quarter-century ago.
Book 4: The Daughters of Alta Mira. It was a small town where everybody knew everyone else, but no one knew who the serial killer was.
Book 5: I Scarce Can Die. In an old Gold Rush town, haunted by ghosts of past lynchings, the recent murder verdict raised troubling questions.
Book 6: The Slaves of Thrift. Two brothers who don’t like each other. An $800 million inheritance coming due. A pack trip in the remote High Sierra. What could go wrong?
Book 7: The Man in the Red Convertible. A teenage girl was handing out church leaflets when she vanished from an isolated rest stop. The trail led to San Francisco at Christmas.
Book 8: True to You in My Way. Too many people in the small mountain town died in suspicious accidents. The explanation was worse than anyone imagined.
Book 9: Hatchback Blondie Summer evenings she drove to the marina and talked to strangers. One night she heard something dangerous.
Photo/Chip Scheuer
About The Author
Michael Wallace is a native and lifelong resident of California. He was a reporter and editor at a daily newspaper for two decades and after that was owner and principal of a public relations and publications consulting business. A dedicated fly fisherman, he has had an ongoing love affair with the mountains of his state. In addition to the Quill Gordon novels, he is the author of a California history book, The Borina Family of Watsonville.
He can be contacted at quillgordon@calcentral.com