The Ace

Released in October, 2008, The Ace traces the rise and fall of a brilliant but sickly American slum kid fated to fly with one of the front-line fighter squadrons hastily and poorly assembled by a U.S. government entirely unprepared for World War I. The novel’s four pivotal roles are those of the 20-year-old kid, a rebellious and dissolute army officer, a corrupt U.S. senator, and a beautiful, guilt-ridden heiress to millions. The supporting cast includes such real historical figures as Brig. Gen. “Billy” Mitchell, AEF commander Gen. John J. Pershing, and flying ace Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker. The novel dramatizes the incredible push-and-pull in Congress and the military that led to the climactic aerial battles establishing Allied air superiority. There’s a lot of aviation combat action but the story’s spine is the doomed, offbeat love affair between the kid, who becomes a leading ace, and the heiress, who can buy anything but self-respect.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

The Blue Max

The book that started it all. World War I aviation action in a literary classic that explores the roots of the Nazism leading to World War II. Produced as a 20^th Century-Fox film.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

The Blood Order

The second novel in The Blue Max Trilogy, it follows Bruno Stachel, central character in The Blue Max, from the end of World War I through the postwar guilts and frustrations that lure him into the Nazi Party and a personal association with Adolf Hitler.

The Tin Cravat

The final novel in the trilogy, in which Bruno Stachel sees his guilt and attempts restitution. As in the other two novels, there is a lot of aviation action, as well as cloak-and-dagger skullduggery.

The Expendable Spy

An award-winning World War II espionage thriller, in which an American agent parachutes into Nazi Germany. Gutsy and persistent, the agent mounts a lethal, lone-wolf battle against the surrounding Wehrmacht and scheming top-rank SS and Gestapo executives. Full of international intrigue and edge-of-the-chair suspense.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

One of Us Works for Them

Cold War espionage highjinks in Heidelberg, in which a laid-back pair of U.S. counter-spies butts heads and kicks butts in a deadly search for the Soviet mole who lurks and smirks within the highest levels of American military intelligence. Movie rights purchased by Frank Sinatra.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

Spies, Inc.

A decorated ex-Army counter-intelligence agent, now an obscure suburbanite family man working for a U.S. chemical corporation, is hauled off his job by the CEO himself and ordered to find out who is stealing the company’s secrets. Reluctantly reverting to old ways, our man confronts a deadly game involving blackmail and murder. Currently out of print, but available at used book sellers.

The Terror Alliance

Roger Wagner, CIA sleuth with a gift for wry jokes, is given 10 days to uncover an assassination plot against the President of the United States, who is scheduled to give a crucial speech in Munich. Wagner’s frantic search leads him through the German underworld, neo-Nazi dens, glossy jet-set salons, and the highest levels of government. Entangled in a web of murder and double-cross, he soon realizes that it isn’t only the President’s life that’s on the line.

Florida is Closed Today

Roger Wagner again — this time as a CIA agent who has retired and moved to Florida with his smart, pretty wife. His leisure is disrupted when a the body of a fellow secret agent washes ashore near his beach-front house, an incident that launches him on a frantic, hazardous chase, not only to save his kidnapped wife but also to neutralize a doomsday bomb hidden by the terrorists who hold her — and the entire state of Florida — as hostages.

Judgment in Blood

Welcome to Zieglersville, a wealthy suburb where church-going citizens sit on velvet cushions of hypocrisy. Where scandals are hidden by high-finance “charity.” And where sinful secrets have erupted into gory serial murders. As the town reels from the horror of the grisly killings, City Police Inspector Stabile searches desperately for clues that link the murders to biblical sources of godly punishment.

The Flying Cross

The time: World War I, 1918 . The setting: Headquarters, Army Air Service, American Expeditionary Forces in France. The problem: Someone is murdering high-ranking U.S. aviation officers serving on the staff of General Pershing. A former hill-country sheriff’s deputy named Rankin, now a lowly enlisted man in the Provost Marshal’s office, is assigned the case. As the investigation proceeds, Rankin himself becomes the target.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

The Potsdam Bluff

High-tension military espionage and international intrigue in the last days of World War II when Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin go one-on-one at Potsdam, Germany, settling the postwar fate of Western Europe. Truman pulls off a victory like a true poker player — and with the special help of U.S. Agent Alex Lukas, who unwittingly plays Truman’s devastating trump card.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

Tailspin

In 1945, after Germany’s surrender, Major Kaufmann of Eisenhower’s G-2 counter-intelligence wonders why the Air Corps is ignoring an Italian report on stolen U.S. bombs Then he discovers that German POW airmen are being transferred to secret U.S. bases for reasons no one will admit. Likely sources for answers turn up murdered and he discovers that there’s a plot to start World War III. Can he break it up before he, himself, is killed?

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

Sweeney’s Run

Tom Sweeney, at 42 a pensioner from the Department of Defense Intelligence, is confounded when the body of an old friend and CIA agent turns up in his house, scrawling a message on the bathroom tile with his dying blood. The search for answers threatens to get Sweeney and his beautiful friend Cap O’Brien killed, and change the face of America forever — unless Sweeney can run fast enough.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

Slingshot

This is the novel the critics either loved or hated — no middle ground — because it takes us deep into the heart of a world-spanning conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States. Some felt threatened by it, because it depicts America in the near future, when the nation is led by a foppish, ineffectual president and corrupt politicians ready to sell out to the highest bidder — including foreign governments and terrorist organizations. Some gave it rousing approval, saying that it’s the best Hunter novel yet and that a novel like this was long overdue. Readers are still ranting over it.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books

Addie

(Written under the pen name "Lee Thompson")

Florida in the mid-1880s is still a wilderness frontier. Addie ekes out a living from her canteen at the junction of two primitive railroads outside St. Augustine. After preventing a disastrous train wreck, Addie meets Burke, wealthy owner of one of the railroads. An attraction blossoms, but is tantalizingly unfulfilled when social persecution forces Addie to flee into the subtropical wilderness. Burke launches a hunt for her, unaware that she’s a pawn in a plot to steal his railroad empire.

The Cure

Hunter at his Machiavellian best.

A gripping tale of cutting-edge medicine and international intrigue, exposing the dark underside of the modern medical establishment. Suppose a cure for cancer were finally discovered, a cure that could save the lives of millions — and render much of today’s medical and pharmaceutical industry obsolete? How far would the world’s movers and shakers go to control this miraculous panacea — or destroy it?

Controversial oncologist Dr. Anson Lunt dies in a suspicious plane crash, just as one of his researchers develops what appears to be a “magic bullet” against all forms of cancer. Before his mangled body is even cold, powerful forces are conspiring to seize control of the top-secret cure, either to reap the potential riches at stake—or else to suppress the discovery entirely. Industrial espionage, blackmail, and murder are only a few of the ruthless strategies employed in the no-holds-barred battle for the Cure.

Also available from Blackstone Audio Books