Michael Bowen Books In Order

Faithfully Executed

When the rumor that the recently executed prisoner was already dead before he received his lethal injection threatens the President’s reelection, Richard Michaelson conducts a secret investigation and discovers connections between the Pentagon, a Japanese computer firm, and Washington society.

Collateral Damage

A dead body is discovered in a locked room in a country house in the affluent Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. Nine people were present in the house at the time, nine people who saw nothing they’d like to report and did nothing they’re willing to confess to. A document that might relate to a CIA scandal in the recent past or to a presidential election in the near future is missing, and much sought after. No one will know exactly what it means until it’s found. But would someone be willing to kill for it? The key to this complicated puzzle lies with two sisters, two young women who don’t quite fit into Washington’s high stakes political arena. Retired Foreign Service agent Richard Michaelson and his friend Marjorie Randolph find themselves at the middle of this whirlwind of political and personal intrigue, and must do more than sort clues. For the most challenging locked room you’re likely to encounter in Washington, D.C., is your own mind.

Screen Scam

‘Bowen…
writes with such swift and cynical humor that you are sure to be entertained.’ Washington Post Book World

Rep Pennyworth faces the client from hell. She is Charlotte Buchanan, author of And Done to Others Harm, a mystery of no particular merit. Charlotte contends the 1997 novel is the basis for the 1999 film Contemplation of Death. She wants to sue. Rep would blow her off, but Charlotte is the steely daughter of the CEO heading the firm’s major corporate client, Tavistock, Ltd. Charlotte is resolute in demanding recognition. Rep digs in, aided by his literature addicted wife Melissa, and files suit. By return mail comes a death threat, a grisly and gristly version of Hold Your Tongue.

Research shows the film s director to be Aaron Eastman, Hollywood legend, whose Red Guard should have been a box office and critical smash but fell oddly short. Eastman contends the Oscar balloting was sabotaged. Now he s on the comeback trail and anxious not to derail. He and Rep talk and, bit by bit, the outline of a bizarre scheme to destroy the credibility of Red Guard and Eastman emerges. Hoosiers Rep, who enjoys a little spanking, and Melissa, who smokes a little dope, aren t prepared for the larger licenses granted to political powerhouses, but they re quick on the uptake and soon armed…
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Wisconsin lawyer Michael Bowen is the well reviewed author of numerous crime novels published by Crown Worst Case Scenario and by St. Martin’s Press.

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‘this the cleverest whodunit of the season, wrapped up in the cleverest dialogue’ Kirkus Reviews

Unforced Error

Rep and Melissa Pennyworth go to a re enactment of a Civil War battle in Kansas City, Missouri in search of a cutting edge copyright case for Rep and find a corpse instead. Linda Damon, Melissa’s best girlhood friend, worked for the victim before his death, and on one regrettable occasion got a bit too intimately involved in her job. Her husband, Peter, an enthusiastic Civil War hobbyist, had a motive, an opportunity, and a Civil War saber that turns out to have been drenched in the victim’s blood. Logically, Rep’s knowledge of trademark and copyright law, Melissa’s Ph.D in Literature, and the passionate Anglomania of Peter’s boss, librarian Diane Klimchock, should be no help in what is clearly a job for the police. When Rep and Melissa are involved, however, logic is seldom a reliable guide. Their contribution ends up being essential to the solution of a crime whose roots go back to an execution during World War II and a contemporary hatred much more dangerous than one husband’s jealousy.

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers, or at least one…
. Vance Hayes died late one night when his snowmobile broke through thin ice near the Wisconsin Dells. The cold hearted, hard headed lawyer is unmourned by clients, colleagues, or anyone else including his reluctant eulogist, fellow attorney Rep Pennyworth.

Shoot the Lawyer Twice

When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth, suspects he’s being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap publicity stunt. Meanwhile his wife Melissa, the professor half of the couple, gets caught in the middle of a verbal firefight between two colleagues at a literary conference that soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury tampering, forgery of an explosive papal document from World War II and murder. Melissa wants to protect a naive undergraduate who might be implicated. But when one of the other suspects makes Melissa a cast iron alibi, she finds that her search for the truth leads through a maze of gray lies including her own. Rep and Melissa have to combine their talents to stay off the casualty list while they figure out what’s really going on.

Service Dress Blues

This contemporary puzzle mystery features Rep and Melissa Pennyworth, a bantering, plucky couple. Rep, a trademark and copyright lawyer, has followed Melissa to Milwaukee in her quest for an assistant professorship. Then, on the night before the Army Navy game, a midshipman is found stark naked and barely alive in a cheap motel near the Naval Academy in Annapolis. The victim’s closest relatives are Ole and Lena Lindstrom, a pair of aging but scrappy Wisconsin political activists who had asked Rep for copyright advice. Ole and Lena have a well earned reputation for trading punches with each other, and when Ole is murdered, Lena becomes an instant suspect. But Rep and Melissa suspect there is more involved, including a connection between the midshipman s mugging and Ole s murder.