William Diehl

Chameleon: A series of apparently unconnected events prompts television journalist Eliza Gunn and investigative reporter Frank O'Hara to embark on a journey around the world and into the realm of spies, big business, and assassins.

Eureka: The year is 1941. Verna Wilensky has been electrocuted in her bathtub, leaving a lower-middle-class life, no survivors, and a bank account packed with almost a hundred thousand dollars. Mysterious checks have consistently come to her for more than twenty years, most drawn from a bank in San Pietro, a town once known as Eureka. Eureka was a town that used to be a bootlegger’s paradise and a gangster’s dream. Now it is the rebuilt metropolis where Sheriff Thomas Culhane is launching a bid to be the golden state’s next governor. But something just might threaten his ambitions. As Bannon digs deeper into Wilensky’s demise, he unearths a decades-old secret that starts in a shootout, builds to a bloodbath, and could end up within the upper echelons of California’s elite, forever changing the destiny of a state.

Hooligans: Dunetown was once a quiet friendly little town. Now it had 24-hour porno palaces, neon casinos, a big racetrack and was run by the Cincinnati Triad. Together with the Special Operations Branch of the Dunetown Police Department, Kilmer aims to put them out of business.

Seven Ways To Die: Micah Cody is a 30-something NYPD captain of homicide, who’s founded a special unit known as TAZ with city-wide license to take over any investigation at all, with special focus on serial killers. Now its ultimate challenge is on the loose in Manhattan, with three victims already whose causes of death seem like intentional defiance of TAZ’s existence—and four to go in four deadly days leading up to Halloween. Chronicling it all with great amusement is the Capote-like award-winning crime writer Ward Hamilton who, egged on by his sexually voracious socialite bedmate, is determined to bring TAZ to its knees journalistically.

Sharky's Machine: Italy, 1944: A squad of American soldiers on a dangerous secret mission is ambushed and slaughtered . . . and a fortune in gold vanishes. Hong Kong, 1959: An aging American colonel, haunted by his wartime past, is brutally murdered in a luxurious brothel.
Atlanta, 1975: The last survivor of the fatal World War II ambush in Italy is executed at point blank range in a parking lot.
Blowing away a crazed, gun-wielding drug dealer on a crowded city bus gets police detective Sharky bounced from the narc squad into the dreaded dregs of the department-vice. That's where he stumbles on a high-priced call girl and her pimp who are fleecing rich johns in an even higher-priced blackmail scam. Together with his "machine" of hard-bitten vice squad veterans, Sharky closes in for a big sting. He doesn't count on falling for Domino, his alluring target. Or falling into the middle of the murderous design she's a part of-involving a hot presidential candidate, the shadowy multimillionaire who's backing him, and the ice-cold assassin they're using to wipe out the past . . . before it blows their future to hell.

Thai Horse: When his best friend vanished, Christian Hatcher, the Shadow Warrior, had no choice. He had to follow the heroin pipeline . . . from Hong Kong to Bangkok, to the deepest darkness of Vietnam.

The Hunt (aka 27): As the world trembles with the approach of World War II, a woman dies at the hands of Hitler's henchmen. Her murder forever changes her lover, Francis Scott Keegan, a relentless anti-Nazi mercenary, who becomes locked in a desperate cat-and-mouse game with the Third Reich's perfect spy, a man of a thousand faces. In an arena that encompasses presidents and gangsters, spies and sirens, the deadly present and the dark past, Keegan pursues his elusive quarry into the cutting edge of world events--and into the secret inner workings of a terrifying mission known only as "27."

#01 - Primal Fear: Hotshot attorney Martin Vail must defend a young man accused of brutally murdering Archbishop Rushman, known as the "Saint of Lakeview Drive." This case looks impossible until his psychologist makes a discovery.
"Spine-tingling...Mr. Diehl can sustain suspense."
--THE NEW YORK TIMES
Martin Vail, the brilliant "bad-boy" lawyer every prosecutor and politician loves to hate, is defending Aaron Stampler, a man found holding a bloody butcher's knife near a murdered archbishop. Vail is certain to lose, but Vail uses his unorthodox ways to good advantage when choosing his legal team--a tight group of men and women who must uncover the extraordinary truth behind the archbishop's slaughter. They do, in a heart-stopping climax unparalleled for the surprise it springs on the reader.

Clever twists and a bona fide surprise ending make this an above-average courtroom thriller, tapping into the post-O.J. scrutiny of our legal system in the case of a hotshot Chicago defense attorney (Richard Gere) whose latest client is an altar boy (Edward Norton) accused of murdering a Catholic archbishop. The film uses its own manipulation to tell a story about manipulation, and when we finally discover who's been pulling the strings, the payoff is both convincing and pertinent to the ongoing debate over what constitutes truth in the American system of justice. Making an impressive screen debut that has since led to a stellar career, Norton gives a performance that rides on a razor's edge of schizophrenic pathology--his role is an actor's showcase, and without crossing over the line of credibility, Norton milks it for all it's worth. Gere is equally effective in a role that capitalizes on his shifty screen persona, and Laura Linney and Frances McDormand give memorable performances in their intelligently written supporting roles.

#02 - Show of Evil: It begins with a shocking, unsolved murder. In small town in southern Illinois, the butchered body of Linda Balfour--with a cryptic code printed in blood on the back of her head--forges a gruesome link to the brutal murder of Bishop Rushman, the beloved Chicago clergyman who had been dismembered years before by the angelic-looking altar boy, Aaron Stampler. The same Aaron Stampler whom defense attorney Martin Vail saved from the electric chair...

Now Vail is Chicago's chief prosecutor, facing the nightmare of his life. If Stampler has been locked away in a high-security institution for the past ten years, how could he have killed Linda Balfour? Then another altar boy turns up dead with a similar inscription in blood on the back of his head. If Aaron Stampler isn't committing these killings, who is? Martin Vail's career--maybe even his life--hangs on the answer..