A “Splendid” Silence

The third installment in my Viennese Mysteries series, The Silence, will be out December 1, and Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, noting that “Jones vividly evokes 1900 Vienna under the leadership of its notorious anti-Semitic mayor, Karl Lueger, in his splendid third whodunit featuring attorney Karl Werthen and criminologist Hanns Gross.” Kirkus Reviews earlier included it in its “10 Thrillers to Watch for This Fall” list. I also provide some background to the inspiration for this novel in a “Story behind the Story” entry at the Rap Sheet.

To celebrate the pub date, I am posting the first chapter here. Enjoy!

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A Memoir of Cold War Vienna

Fans of this blog know that I occasionally post remembrances of Vienna and Europe during the final decades of the Cold War. These have always gotten a good response–good enough that I have gathered some of these together (plus a long short story) for a memoir now available as an Amazon Kindle.

Here is the blue-eyed refugee from the Biafran War, Ubhani, the man in the tower of the title, seeking asylum in the Austrian capital; the Hungarian patriot who pays his own special tribute to the 1956 uprising; the nondescript state police agent commissioned to watch foreigners in neutral Austria to ensure they did not ruffle the feathers of the Soviets; the editor of a prestigious Viennese publishing house none too eager to do business with a brash young Ami.

Travel back to Czechoslovakia just months after the Soviet’s brutal suppression of Prague Spring in’68; to guard towers along the waist-deep waters of a lake on the Austro-Hungarian border; to a cozy armchair at the British Council Library; to an all-purpose Tabak Trafik: to life in a Cretan cave; or to the final voyage of the SS France.

An added bonus is the short story, “Body Blows,” which introduces Sam Kramer, the foreign correspondent protagonist from my new series of novels set in Europe following the fall of the Wall.

Cover art is by a talented graphic artist, Peter Ratcliffe.

And hey, at $4.99, what’s not to like?

Enjoy!

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The Stone Barrington Novels of Stuart Woods: “Always Looking for 70 Degrees Farenheit”

Prolific author Stuart Woods is no stranger to the New York Times bestseller lists: he’s had thirty consecutive novels on that list. With about fifty novels published, Woods is a fixture among mystery and thriller writers, the winner of an Edgar and France’s Prix de Literature Policiere. Woods is the author of a number of stand-alone novels, including his 1981 breakthrough work, Chiefs, made into a CBS mini-series.Ongoing series works include those featuring Ed Eagle, Rick Barron, Holly Barker, and Will Lee. But it is perhaps the score of novels in his Stone Barrington series for which Woods is best known.

Barrington, a former NYPD homicide detective who was forced out of the force because he too often butted heads with his superiors. Barrington turns to the legal profession, and over the course of twenty-two books becomes the suave hero whose clients involve him in all sorts of Manhattan mayhem. Bookreporter  noted of Woods’ suave protagonist: “Stone is classy, humorous, sarcastic, well dressed, well educated, rich, handsome, single and well heeled. It is a given that Stone will get into deep trouble without asking for it.” When in New York, Stone likes hanging out at Elaine’s, but his duties take him farther afield, as well, from the Caribbean to Key West to Southern Californian and points in between.

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“Walking in Beauty”: Aimee and David Thurlo’s Ella Clah Mysteries

Aimee and David Thurlo are the authors of the Ella Clah series, featuring a former Navajo FBI agent who becomes head of a tribal police unit; the series’ sixteenth installment, Black Thunder, is just out. The Ella Clah books  have earned critical praise from a wide variety of sources. A New York Times Book Review critic noted that “Clah is always good company, on and off the reservation,” while Romantic Times had this to say of the protagonist: “Ella is compelling as a highly skilled officer of the law dealing with modern vs. traditionalist issues on the reservation.”

The Thurlos have been married for almost forty years and have been writing novels together for nearly that long, in a variety of genres including romance, young adult, and mystery. They have three ongoing mystery series, the Sister Agatha series, starring a cloistered nun, the Lee Nez series, featuring a Navajo vampire who teams up with a female FBI agent to fight crimes that have elements of the supernatural, and the works featuring Ella Clah.

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