Marvin Gray’s past has returned to haunt him. Fifteen years ago, he had a love affair with a beautiful Hispanic Playboycenterfold, Maggie May Esquivel. Now, his only true love has turned to Marvin to rescue her from the notorious Salvadoran criminal gang MS-13, which has threatened the lives of Maggie May and their teenage son, Josh. In an effort to protect his estranged family, Marvin must investigate a convoluted case he cannot understand. He must learn investigative skills of his new profession as a private eye on the run, while searching for a mysterious key that will satisfy unknown predators of a Mexican drug cartel linked to the street gang. This quest leads him into the most dangerous underworld lairs of Latin American and the US, where he will uncover a conspiracy to murder a US government official in the American Embassy in El Salvador. The investigation will also force him to confront the demons of violent trauma dating back to the Salvadoran Civil War that he thought he had long since buried beneath a soiled life of alcoholism and failed relationships. Only by rescuing Maggie and Josh, can Marvin save himself.
This international thriller, Maggie May, traces the edge of social history through the Salvadoran Civil War and subsequent gang violence in Los Angeles against the backdrop of inherent poverty, crime, and American foreign intervention and intrigue in Latin America. Marvin Gray’s default storytelling style is humor interspersed with unrelenting intensity, suspense, and ultimate tragedy. Gray’s characters rarely live on tectonic fault plates of good and evil. But rather, Gray depicts a landscape of the human psyche where the subtle fractures between heroic and villainous are shifting sands that can be viewed in our own mirrors on any given day. Maggie May is the uncharted territory where behind every answer unfolds a frontier of fresh questions.
Marvin Gray is hiding in an abandoned motel in Lexington, Kentucky, nursing a nervous breakdown and seeking a painless way to end his life when he comes across three complex and intelligent young women who permanently change his life. Nasreen is the twenty-three-year-old Persian goddess who reawakens his sexuality and will to survive while implicating him in attempted murder. His desire to keep her in his life may become his final undoing. The mysterious Mia is a younger and tougher African American version of himself. She earns his trust by renewing his sense of purpose, restoring his faith in humanity, and saving his life. Gray is now scrambling to save hers. Andrea is a University of Kentucky student from Marvin’s hometown, Leesburg, Illinois. When she publicizes his photograph and role in “The Fearless Four” tragedy, buried deep in Gray’s past, she unwittingly tips off a Mexican drug cartel as to his whereabouts, placing Gray and everyone around him in mortal danger. The cartel is the same one responsible for the death of his son while trying to recover a set of financial ledgers that Gray has hidden away for protection. Now he is forced to choose between fleeing for his life and turning himself over to the cartel to save the lives of those around him.
“They Only Come Out at Night” is the thriller sequel to “Maggie May.” Guilt-ridden, suicidal private detective Marvin Gray once again finds himself out of his league among criminals and adversaries, who are more intelligent and craftier than he. Armed with little more than stubbornness and guile, Gray continues to recreate flawed scenarios, in which he can fix mistakes that he couldn’t fix the first time. Or the time after that.
Marvin Gray wakes up in a psychiatric ward, struggling to come to grips with the traumatic event that put him there. Under therapy, he combs through past events in search of the present day realities that elude him. Tragedies in Baghdad, botched love affairs and failed attempts at protecting children – none of which Marvin is willing to confront.
Meanwhile, he is trapped in a sequence of events that include the murder of friends and the brutalization of his lover at the hands of crime boss Ross Levin, dubbed The Cincinnati Pit Bull. Marvin is forced to break the terms of his probation in Ohio and becomes a fugitive in order to investigate the incineration of a black lady in a backwater racist town in Kentucky.
Gray Areas is the sequel to They Only Come Out at Night. In the latest Marvin Gray thriller he is forced to reconcile disparate threads of time and reality, bring the guilty to justice, and settle old scores. Doing so means venturing into gray areas that stretch the boundaries of his own humanity. It is a painful journey leading to places he won’t like, and teaching him things about himself he will like even less.
American security officer Clark Miller is playing a dangerous game. In order to track terrorist Anwar Khan from Indonesia to the tribal areas of Pakistan, Clark is embroiled in political volatility and religious fanaticism. Now working in Pakistan, he has learned the language, history, and culture of the conservative Muslim country. He has also made the mistake of sleeping with the wrong local women, frequenting the wrong brothels, and trusting the wrong advisors. His appreciation for the Pakistanis and their culture matches his hatred of religious extremism and exploitation.
Miller inherited his relentless determination from an abusive violent father. The more Clark tries to exorcise his paternal demons, the more he recognizes his father in his own behavior. Clark has to embrace his father’s violence to track Khan down and find justice.
But time is running out. Clark’s investigations of Khan have drawn unwanted attention. Pakistani security forces have started investigating Clark, and Anwar Khan has targeted Miller for assassination. When a young prostitute offers to sell information on Khan’s whereabouts, Clark must act quickly. It is now a race against time, money, and loyalties. If the Pakistani security forces don’t get him, the terrorists will.
“Gray Matter” is Marvin Gray’s fast-paced thriller sequel to “Gray Areas.”
Life after rescuing a Hispanic girl from serial killer Stephen Bracken’s basement dungeon should be heavenly. Marvin Gray rekindles his relationship with his girlfriend. He lands a new job investigating missing children. He is solving cases. And he has money for the first time in his life. But Gray is still tormented by his failure to save two other girls from that dungeon. Bracken is still on the loose and reminding Gray regularly that there is a score to settle.
When his own niece Trish goes missing, Gray returns to his home town and his dysfunctional family for the first time in years. The new investigation leads him to child trafficking rings in the underworld of San Antonio, Texas and forces Gray to confront his darkest demons.
Dark Gray Demons is a fast-paced thriller sequel that picks up where Gray Areas and Gray Matter left off.
In 2003, Marvin Gray works for a US government contractor investigating and recovering Babylonian, Sumerian and Acadian artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq and other Iraqi archeological sites. The investigations turn deadly when Gray learns that many of the same people smuggling stolen goods are also involved in sex-trafficking. Iraqi women and girls are being shipped to oil-rich Arab countries for sexual exploitation. The American and British authorities in Baghdad forbid Gray to meddle in the affairs of “friends” of Washington and London. For Gray, the choice is simple. He takes the perilous step into the dark Iraqi underworld where the huge profits generated by assassination-for-hire and sexual exploitation are fueling religious extremism, and will become the future funding base for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Welcome to the Dark Side is the face-paced prequel to Maggie May, dealing with Marvin Gray’s battles with alcoholism, forbidden romances with Arab women, and failed attempts to protect the innocent.
American security officer Nicholas Haden is facing the most important assignment of his career. He must protect his boss Renée Thomas on a journey from Nairobi, Kenya into the heart of Al-Shabaab territory in Somalia in order to open a controversial youth center designed to de-radicalize former Islamic militants. A center, he does not believe in. But the success or failure of this model rehabilitation center may mean the difference between future peace and protracted civil war in Somalia. For very different motives, both Kenyan counter-intelligence authorities and Al-Shabaab militants will stop at nothing to see that the center fails. In an effort to coerce Haden into sabotaging Renée’s trip, these opposing forces threaten the safety of Haden’s wife and young son living in Nairobi. Amid the chaos of Kenyan intelligence and Somali militants, Haden begins to develop feelings of intimacy for his boss. Alcoholism, infidelity, and professional disgrace threaten to rip the fabric of his life to shreds. And Haden realizes that the ability to protect either his boss or his own family is rapidly slipping out of his control.
Set in Al-Shabaab-infested Kenya and Somalia, In His Own Image is a fast paced thriller that tests the boundaries of human courage, loyalty, and integrity. Both Haden and Thomas must separately challenge their own skewed convictions of sex, family, and honor. To endure this ordeal, they will have to commit acts every bit as heinous as those of their enemies. And neither will survive with their humanity intact.
Five-foot, seven-inch Derek Reynolds has earned a reputation as a tough guy protector of women’s rights from Baltimore to Mogadishu. His ground-breaking documentaries on Al-Shabaab, human trafficking, and domestic violence in East Africa have exposed the ugliness of humanity. To Derek’s coworkers and friends, he has become a mentor that helped to shape their professional and personal lives. He encouraged them to defend their beliefs and protect the innocent. Unfortunately, in the process, Derek has made many dangerous enemies, one of whom finally retaliates.
Not more than two months after tragedy strikes the Reynolds family in Kenya, Derek’s closest friends and family find themselves trapped in a compound on the most treacherous night of their lives. Riots, demonstrations, and a police strike scourge the nation’s capital and serve as the perfect storm that allows the city’s most violent criminals twelve hours to loot, rape, and kill with impunity. Now Derek’s loved ones find themselves challenging his legacy to determine if it contains any value that will remain when the dust settles in the morning.