Les Standiford Books In Order

Done Deal

Done Deal is the first in the series featuring reluctant sleuth John Deal, a South Florida building contractor who has a penchant for stepping into the path of the wrong people. Here, Deal is struggling to rebuild the once formidable DealCo, a development company once headed by his flamboyant father Barton Deal but little does he know that the piece of land upon which he plans to build a small apartment complex is coveted by a ruthless businessman intent on making a fortune off Major League Baseball’s arrival in South Florida.

Raw Deal

John Deal’s life is finally coming together he is reunited with his lovely wife, they have a beautiful baby, and DealCo, his Miami construction business, is booming with post Hurricane Andrew contracts rolling in. The future looks bright…
until the night that his house is engulfed by an arsonist’s flames and his wife is terribly burned.

Unbeknownst to him, Deal has stumbled into the path of the sickly sweet plans of sugar cane magnate and Cuban migr power broker, Vicente Luis Torreno, a man obsessed by his dreams of a repatriated Cuba and the juicy profits of the sugar monopoly he is sure will come with it.

Torreno’s sugar coated influence reaches to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, a fact that more than complicates Deal’s efforts to find out who is responsible for this latest tragedy and to avoid joining the string of bodies that litter the South Florida landscape, all the way from the vast cane fields of Lake Okeechobee to the shores of Biscayne Bay.

Deal to Die for

Investigating his best friend’s alleged suicide, John Deal and his partner, Vernon Driscoll, learn that the victim’s agent has recently begun making po*rn movies that have attracted the attention of a Chinese gang. Tour.

Deal On Ice

Reluctant sleuth and Miami developer John Deal is the last of his kind a builder who appreciates his craft. His friend Arch Dolan was the last of his kind, too, a Miami bookseller who sold books because he loved them. Now someone has killed him for it. And he’s only the first body to fall. In quick succession the CEO of a huge bookstore chain and a local lawyer meet violent ends…
and Deal starts finding connections. Still, it’s not easy for Deal: his estranged wife Janice, is still emotionally and physically scarred from mishaps the last time Deal stepped into the path of the wrong people. But Janice was close to Arch and she’s as eager to find the killer as her husband. Working together, they discover that Arch’s sister, lately employed by a charismatic revivalist, has disappeared. With the clues pointing north, Deal and Janice set out on a journey to a distant and frigid climate, one that threatens to chill them out for good.

Presidential Deal

As building contractor/sleuth John Deal sweats in an air conditioned Miami hotel ballroom, preparing to accept an award he’d rather skip, chaos erupts. A band of heavily armed terrorists infiltrates the ceremony, showering the assembled dignitaries with a hail of gunfire. Running for cover, Deal grabs the ceremony’s emcee, the First Lady. But his heroism plays into the hand of a suavely masterful madman, and Deal and the president’s wife are kidnappedtheir captor none other than a onetime CIA operative with a grudge to settle with his former employers. To make matters deadlier, someone in the highest levels of government just may be helping him out. Escape is downright impossible, requiring a level of bravery and ingenuity out of the reach of any ordinary man. But John Deal is far from ordinary…
.

Deal with the Dead

The ‘unassailable new kingpin of the South Florida crime novel’ James Ellroy returns with a breathtaking novel of family secrets and murder.

With his first five John Deal novels, Standiford attracted universal critical praise, and acclaim from such masters as Elmore Leonard, Tony Hillerman, and Stephen King. With his new Deal, however, he has surpassed himself.

Attempting to resurrect the Miami building firm that his late father ruined, Deal is elated to be awarded part of a major project, only to find that the project has strings. Deal never knew that, under duress, his father had been working secretly for a government agency, and now the same agency wants Deal to take his place. With great reluctance, he agrees-and his life is immediately torn apart, as he is caught in the middle of a vicious personal vendetta, his family threatened, and his friends hunted, his own existence hanging by a thread. Deal’s only chance is to turn the tables on everybody seeking to use him, but unless he finds a way to do it soon…
there’ll be nobody left to save.

Filled with intense, character-driven action and rich, textured prose, Deal with the Dead proves again that ‘like Raymond Chandler, Standiford is a poet in a trenchcoat’ The Miami Herald.

Bone Key

Reviewers nationwide have joined such writers as Elmore Leonard, Tony Hillerman, and Stephen King in praising Standiford’s John Deal novels but his new Deal may be the best one yet. On a trip to Key West to talk with a wealthy developer about a new building project, Deal stops to help a young black man who is being rousted by police on a lonely beach road. The young man is appreciative which makes it all the more shocking two days later, when he turns up dead. What happened? The police won’t say. The locals won’t talk. An old girlfriend appears, but Deal can’t tell if she’s there to help or hinder him. References keep being made to a seventy year old tale of piracy and murder as if it should mean something to him. All Deal knows for sure is that the more he looks into it all, the more layers he finds, and the more people seem to have died. And that, unless he can get to the bottom of it soon, the next death just might be his own. Filled with intense, character driven action and rich, textured prose, Bone Key proves again why ‘Standiford’s stories are some of the best suspense novels out there’ Rocky Mountain News.

Havana Run

John Deal has spent much of his adult life trying to rebuild the Miami construction firm that his late father ruined. When the possibility of a major project in post normalized Cuba arises, he can t help but be intrigued. But Deal quickly learns that he’s been lured to Havana for another, more dangerous purpose: to help a freedom fighting group spring an American prisoner from a Castro jail. Of course, Deal wants nothing to do with it until he discovers who the prisoner is. That prisoner is also the holder of secrets, highly sensitive information that Deal s own government thinks worth killing for. The next chapter in the edge of your seat John Deal series.

Black Mountain

A brilliant thriller of man and nature by ‘suspense’s new champion athlete.’ San Francisco ChronicleThrough five Deal novels and a stand alone thriller, Spill, Les Standiford has acquired a passionate readership of fans, critics, and fellow writers. Nothing in his past work, however, is comparable to the adrenaline rush that is Black Mountain the story of a Wyoming wilderness trek beset by men of dark intentions, and the extraordinary battle for survival that follows. It is a novel filled with intricate plotting, razor sharp prose, and surprising characters but Standiford’s colleagues tell it best:’Black Mountain is a fabulous tale set in the rugged wilderness of the American West. What begins as a simple hike in the woods for a group of city dwellers quickly turns into a perilous trek, where every step is more harrowing than the last. Just when you think it’s safe to take a breath, Standiford tops himself with another pulse rattling surprise. Complex and stylish, Black Mountain makes James Dickey’s Deliverance seem like a frolic in the park with the local Cub Scout troop. Featuring the wildest bad guys who ever pulled on hiking boots, this is Standiford’s richest and most compelling work yet. And that’s saying something.’ James W. Hall’A compelling story, beautifully told by someone who knows the peaks and valleys of Wyoming, and those too of the human soul. Simply wonderful.’ Robert B. Parker

The Putt at the End of the World

‘ Sex. Money. International terrorism. And, of course, the ultimate question: Can a compact backswing save the world? Now, in the tradition of Naked Came the Stranger and Naked Came the Manatee, a clubhouseful of acclaimed authors pass the baton or the six iron to create an ensemble tour de force of suspense, romance, and hilarity on the links. Golf is not a team sport. But who says fiction can’t be? Get ready. The gallery is hushed and the approach shot nears. The birdie has landed…
The Putt at the End of the World Fore? No, nine! That’s right. Nine literary grand masters each contribute a chapter and together bring you a full round robin of characters, not to mention a blistering drive of a story line that beats par with every page. Alfonzo Zamora is the venerable Mexican Senior player who’s just discovered he’s going blind. Billy Sprague is the country club pro with a swing as elegant as an eagle in flight except when money’s on the line. Rita Shaughnessy is the hard drinking, hard loving, hard luck golfer on the women’s pro tour. All three receive an invitation from multibillionaire Phillip Bates, founder of Macrodyne Software. To inaugurate his dazzling new course in Scotland, Bates is spending millions to host a tournament starring the superpro trio. The gala will welcome world leaders in the name of global peace and the universal language of golf. Launching Bates’s new, revolutionary computer operating system, the weekend volley will also attract a long scorecard of wild and unanticipated guests, including the world’s most elusive environmental terrorist, a Spanish caddie named Humpy who inspires bogeys, a caddish pro who can’t pass the Rorschach test, a sexy male female counterterrorist team who keep driving into traps of their own making, a certain naked golfer making a bid for his hole in one, and enough plastique to end the world as we know it…
. Will things get rough in the rough? Will the green run red? Where is the mysterious nineteenth hole? And in an apocalyptic final play that will determine the fate of the world, ecoterrorists will converge on the course for an explosive putt to end all putts. The ‘Good Walk’ has never been more fun!’

Opening Day

Reminiscent of Bernard Malamud tms The Natural, W. P. Kinsella tms Shoeless Joe, and the film Field of Dreams, Opening Day is a novella with the kind of magic charm that transcends sport and rises to the level of heroic myth. When the owner of a downtrodden team in the AA Mid Florida League discovers that his aging groundskeeper was once a star in the Negro Leagues, a public relations scheme is hatched. But what begins as a stunt leads to an astonishing outcome that no one, least of all Buck Wilson, the unassuming former great, could have predicted.

Last Train to Paradise

Last Train to Paradise is acclaimed novelist Les Standiford’s fast paced and gripping true account of the extraordinary construction and spectacular demise of the Key West Railroad one of the greatest engineering feats ever undertaken, destroyed in one fell swoop by the strongest storm ever to hit U.S. shores. In 1904, the brilliant and driven entrepreneur Henry Flagler, partner to John D. Rockefeller and the true mastermind behind Standard Oil, concocted the dream of a railway connecting the island of Key West to the Florida mainland, crossing a staggering 153 miles of open ocean an engineering challenge beyond even that of the Panama Canal. The financiers considered the project and said, Unthinkable. The engineers pondered the problems and from all came one verdict, Impossible…
. But build it they did, and the railroad stood as a magnificent achievement for twenty two years. Once dismissed as Flagler s Folly, it was heralded as the Eighth Wonder of the World until a will even greater than Flagler s rose up in opposition. In 1935, a hurricane of exceptional force, which would be dubbed the Storm of the Century, swept through the tiny islands, killing some 700 residents and workmen and washing away all but one sixty foot section of track, on which a 320,000 pound railroad engine stood and gripped its rails as if the gravity of Jupiter were pressing upon it. Standiford brings the full force and fury of this storm to terrifying life. In spinning his saga of the railroad s construction, Standiford immerses us in the treacherous world of the thousands of workers who beat their way through infested swamps, lived in fragile tent cities on barges anchored in the midst of daunting stretches of ocean, and suffered from a remarkable succession of three ominous hurricanes that killed many and washed away vast stretches of track. Steadfast through every setback, Flagler inspired a loyalty in his workers so strong that even after a hurricane dislodged one of the railroad s massive pilings, casting doubt over the viability of the entire project, his engineers refused to be beaten. The question was no longer Could it be done? but Can we make it to Key West on time? to allow Flagler to ride the rails of his dream. Last Train to Paradise celebrates this crowning achievement of Gilded Age ambition, a sweeping tale of the powerful forces of human ingenuity colliding with the even greater forces of nature s wrath. From the Hardcover edition.

Meet You in Hell

Here is history that reads like fiction: the riveting story of two founding fathers of American industry Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick and the bloody steelworkers strike that transformed their fabled partnership into a furious rivalry. Author Les Standiford begins at the bitter end, when the dying Carnegie proposes a final meeting after two decades of separation, probably to ease his conscience. Frick’s reply: Tell him that I ll meet him in hell. It is a fitting epitaph. Set against the backdrop of the Gilded Age, a time when Horatio Alger preached the gospel of upward mobility and expansionism went hand in hand with optimism, Meet You in Hell is a classic tale of two men who embodied the best and worst of American capitalism. Standiford conjures up the majesty and danger of steel manufacturing, the rough and tumble of late nineteenth century big business, and the fraught relationship of the world s richest man and the ruthless coke magnate to whom he entrusted his companies. Enamored of Social Darwinism, the emerging school of thought that applied the notion of survival of the fittest to human society, both Carnegie and Frick would introduce revolutionary new efficiencies and meticulous cost control to their enterprises, and would quickly come to dominate the world steel market. But their partnership had a dark side, revealed most starkly by their brutal handling of the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. When Frick, acting on Carnegie s orders to do whatever was necessary, unleashed three hundred Pinkerton detectives, the result was the deadliest clash between management and labor in U.S. history. WHILE BLOOD FLOWED, FRICK SMOKED ran one newspaper headline. The public was outraged. An anarchist tried to assassinate Frick. Even today, the names Carnegie and Frick cannot be uttered in some union friendly communities. Resplendent with tales of backroom chicanery, bankruptcy, philanthropy, and personal idiosyncrasy, Meet You in Hell is a fitting successor to Les Standiford s masterly Last Train to Paradise. Artfully weaving the relationship of these titans through the larger story of a young nation s economic rise, Standiford has created an extraordinary work of popular history. From the Hardcover edition.

Washington Burning

The Riveting Story of the Federal City and the Men Who Built It

In 1814, British troops invaded Washington, consuming President Madison’s hastily abandoned dinner before setting his home and the rest of the city ablaze. The White House still bears scorch and soot marks on its foundation stones. It was only after this British lesson in hard war, designed to terrorize, that Americans overcame their resistance to the idea of Washington as the nation s capital and embraced it as a symbol of American might and unity.

The dramatic story of how the capital rose from a wilderness is a vital chapter in American history, filled with intrigue and outsized characters from George Washington to Pierre Charles L Enfant, the eccentric, passionate, difficult architect who fell in love with his adopted country. This Frenchman both inspired by the American cause of liberty and wounded while defending it first endeared himself to then General Washington with a sketch drawn at Valley Forge. Designing buildings, parades, medals, and coins, L Enfant became the creator of a new American aesthetic, but the early tastemaker had ambition and pride to match his talent. Self serving and incapable of compromise, he was consumed with his artistic dream of the Federal City, eventually alienating even the president, his onetime champion.

Washington struggled to balance L Enfant s enthusiasm for his brilliant design with the strident opposition of fiscal conservatives such as Thomas Jefferson, whose counsel eventually led to L Enfant s dismissal. The friendships, rivalries, and conflicting ideologies of the principals in this drama as revealed in their deceptively genteel correspondence and other historical sources mirror the struggles of a fledgling nation to form a kind of government the world had not yet known.

In these pages, as in Last Train to Paradise and Meet You in Hell, master storyteller Les Standiford once again tells a compelling, uniquely American story of hubris and achievement, with a man of epic ambition at its center. Utterly absorbing and scrupulously researched, Washington Burning offers a fresh perspective on the birth of not just a city, but a nation.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

As uplifting as the tale of Scrooge itself, this is the story of how one writer and one book revived the signal holiday of the Western world. Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay. His publisher turned it down, so Dickens used what little money he had to put out A Christmas Carol himself. He worried it might be the end of his career as a novelist. The book immediately caused a sensation. And it breathed new life into a holiday that had fallen into disfavor, undermined by lingering Puritanism and the cold modernity of the Industrial Revolution. It was a harsh and dreary age, in desperate need of spiritual renewal, ready to embrace a book that ended with blessings for one and all. With warmth, wit, and an infusion of Christmas cheer, Les Standiford whisks us back to Victorian England, its most beloved storyteller, and the birth of the Christmas we know best. The Man Who Invented Christmas is a rich and satisfying read for Scrooges and sentimentalists alike. From the Hardcover edition.

Bringing Adam Home

Before Adam Walsh there were no faces on milk cartons, no Amber Alerts, no National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, no federal databases of crimes against children, no pedophile registry. His 1981 abduction and murder unsolved for over a quarter of a century forever changed America. One sunny July morning in 1981, Rev Walsh and her six year old son Adam stopped by the local Sears to pick up some new lamps. Enchanted by a video game at the store’s entrance, Adam begged Rev to let him try it out while she shopped. When she returned a few minutes later, Adam was gone. The shock of Adam’s murder, and of the inability of the police and the FBI to find his killer, radically altered American innocence and our ideas about childhood. Gone forever were the days when parents would allow their kids out of the house with the casual instruction ‘Be home by dark!’ Rev and John Walsh who would go on to create America’s Most Wanted became advocates for the transformation of law enforcement’s response to and handling of such cases. Prompted by the Walshes’ activism, Congress passed the Missing Children Act in 1982, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was founded in 1984. While our lives have been significantly altered by Adam Walsh’s case, few of us know the whole story how, after more than twenty seven years of relentless investigation, decorated Miami Beach homicide detective Joe Matthews finally identified Adam’s killer. Bringing Adam Home is the definitive account of this horrifying crime which, like the Lindbergh kidnapping fifty years earlier, captured public attention and its aftermath, a true story of tragedy, love, faith, and dedication. It reveals the pain and tenacity of a family determined to find justice, the failed police work that allowed a killer to remain uncharged, and the determined efforts of one cop who accomplished what an entire legal system could not. As harrowing as In Cold Blood, yet ultimately uplifting, Bringing Adam Home is the riveting story of a triumph of justice and the enduring power of love.