Jack Carpenter Series by James Swain (Books 1-4)

Book Preface

1. Midnight Rambler
Years ago, South Florida cop Jack Carpenter beat up a murder suspect named Simon Skell, a dangerous predator with a penchant for playing the Rolling Stones’ “Midnight Rambler” as he tortured young women. When Jack lost his temper, he lost his job and his marriage, too; so as Skell’s early release from prison draws near, the tarnished hero–now a specialist in missing-child cases– sees an opportunity to make things right. Scrambling to gather more evidence, Jack uncovers a shocking criminal conspiracy: a group of four men who kidnap and kill young women on the margins of society. Teaming up with an FBI agent, Jack must outwit, outrun, and outmaneuver his enemies in this taut, riveting novel of suspense. Midnight Rambler pairs James Swain’s trademark smooth-as-silk writing with a plot bigger and bolder than anything he’s done before.

2. The Night Stalker
Abb Grimes is famous. Just ask the ghoulish tourists who flock to his former home to take photographs. Years ago, Grimes killed eighteen women, some never found. As the head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit, Jack Carpenter was intimately involved in the Grimes case. Now, days away from execution, the notorious serial killer reaches out to ex-cop Carpenter with a surprising request.
Abb Grimes’ grandson was lured from his home. The cops are convinced the boy’s father'”Abb’s troubled son, Jed'”is behind the boy’s disappearance, but Jack’s not so sure. With a personal connection to the kidnapped child, Carpenter takes the case, and that’s when the situation goes from terrifying to fatal. There’s another gruesome murder, and once again the evidence points straight to Jed. Have the unspeakable sins of his father taken root within this troubled young man?
Carpenter races against time and a police department that wants his help but rejects his aggressive style as he searches through an underworld of predators, assembling the jagged pieces of a depraved puzzle, desperate to put an end to a murderous stalker’s blood-soaked rampage.
With unremitting action and skillfully polished prose, bestselling author James Swain has written his most riveting thriller yet, delving even deeper into the fascinating psyche of misbehaving crusader Jack Carpenter. A hero immersed in the evil that is his prey, Carpenter battles a stunning betrayal'”and a horrendous danger no one saw coming.

3. The Night Monster
The shadowy side of the Sunshine State, where blood runs cold even in the tropical heat, is the tantalizing, terrifying territory few know better than James Swain. His razor-sharp tales of criminals, cops, and South Florida – style suspense bite like a hungry gator and never let go.
The past has come back to haunt P.I. Jack Carpenter, former head of the Broward County Missing Persons Unit. As a young cop he failed to stop the kidnapping of a college coed by a shockingly large assailant-and neither of them was ever seen again. The abduction has remained Carpenter’s most chilling cold case, and even now the mystery of the missing girl lurks in his darkest dreams. But after eighteen years, it’s about to become terrifying reality once more.
When his daughter, Jessie, asks him to bird-dog a camera-toting creep who’s been shadowing her college basketball team, Carpenter’s hot pursuit of the video voyeur leads him smack into another run-in with his old hulking nemesis, who abducts one of Jessie’s teammates. While the Broward County cops are determined to pin the rap on a convenient suspect, Carpenter isn’t about to let grim history repeat itself-especially when he discovers a pattern of unsolved kidnappings involving the same massive perp.
With the eager assistance of the kidnap victim’s high-powered tycoon father, the uneasy cooperation of his old unit’s new commander, and precious little time before the trail goes cold, Jack and his trusty dog, Buster, hit the ground running. And they’ll need all the help they can get-including backup from an FBI man with a personal stake in the hunt-as they follow a twisted trail from the ruins of a shuttered mental asylum with an infamous past to the streets of a sinister small town with a ghastly secret.

4. The Program
Is it possible to create a serial killer? FBI Special Agent Ken Linderman (last seen alongside Jack Carpenter in bestseller The Night Monster) is about to find out. A serial killer has kidnaped seventeen-year-old Wayne Ladd, and is putting the boy through the Program, a fiendish project designed to turn young boys into raging killers. Along with hot-headed FBI Agent Rachel Vick, Linderman must race against the clock to save Wayne before he’s turned into a monster.
With the odds against them and time running out, Linderman and Vick will stop at nothing to save Wayne, and bring a sadistic criminal to justice.