Fiction - Mystery

by Mark Rubinstein
In every life, there lurks catastrophe. So believes Eli Dagan, a thirty-nine-year-old man whose traumatic past led to his service as an assassin for the Mossad. He now lives in New York City, where under various assumed names he’s a contract killer.
The day All-American Joey Blade turns 18, he learns his ex-girlfriend is pregnant, is betrayed by his new girlfriend, and is arrested for the attempted murder of two police officers. Then things get bad.
Secret military weapons, saboteurs, a volcanic eruption—and a probe of Chief Detective Koa Kane’s criminal past
On Hawaii Island, a volcanic earthquake disrupts an abandoned cemetery—unearthing the body of a woman mutilated by her killer to conceal her identity.
The search for her identity leads Hilo Hawaii’s Chief Detective Koa Kane to a mysterious defense contractor with a politically connected board of directors. Defying his chief of police, Koa pursues the killer, only to become entangled in an FBI espionage investigation of Deimos, a powerful secret military weapon. Is the FBI telling all it knows—or does it, too, have a duplicitous agenda?
An elusive extremist hell-bent on destroying America. A woman of uncommon valor haunted by her tragic past. A dark web hacker confronting his conscience. A failed intelligence officer in search of redemption.
Something unusual is going on with the dementia patients at Pleasant View Nursing Home.
Dr. Jim Bob Brady, Houston orthopedic surgeon and amateur sleuth, finds himself in the midst of a different type of medical mystery. His friend and colleague, Dr. James Morgenstern, refers him a series of dementia patients with orthopedic problems from Pleasant View Nursing Home. Each patient dies, irrespective of the treatment, a situation that Doc Brady is unaccustomed to.
End-of-life care—or assisted death
When her elderly patients start dying at home days after minor surgery, anesthesiologist Dr. Kate Downey wants to know why. The surgeon, not so much. “Old people die, that’s what they do,” is his response. When Kate presses, surgeon Charles Ricken places the blame squarely on her shoulders. Kate is currently on probation and the chief of staff sides with the surgeon, leaving Kate to prove her innocence and save her own career. With her husband in a prolonged coma, it’s all she has left.
While rummaging through the attic, high school senior, Jack Davies, is surprised to find his never-before-seen birth certificate, revealing a startling bit of information that changes his life. The story his mother told about his birth, he discovers, is revealed to be a lie, shattering long-held beliefs and the trust he had for her. Jack becomes obsessed with discovering the truth, leading him down a dangerous path. Faced with unanswered questions and confounding obstacles at every turn, Jack finds himself deeply enmeshed in an intricate world of national security and international intrigue. Relationships are tested as his every move is tracked by a group of mysterious people. Who are they? Whose side are they on? Who can he trust? And, most importantly, who will he ultimately become?
On Hawai'i Island, an anonymous 911 caller reports a body at Pohakuloa, the Army’s live-fire training area. Hilo Chief Detective Koa Kane, a cop with his own secret criminal past, finds a mutilated corpse—bearing all the hallmarks of ancient ritual sacrifice. Koa encounters a host of obstacles as he pursues the murderer—an incompetent local medical examiner, hostility from both haoles (Westerners) and sovereignty advocates, and a myriad of lies.
Plastic surgeon Lou Edwards’s life is complicated by two major issues. One, his wife has lupus, possibly due to leaking silicone from breast implants Edwards himself inserted. And two, his malpractice insurance has been canceled, as it has been for many other plastic surgeons, due to the burgeoning breast implant problem. But it gets worse. Shortly after Edwards threatens an insurance company president on national TV, the president is found murdered in his penthouse.
In the high mountains of Tibet, rumors are spreading. People whisper of an outbreak, of thousands of dead, of bodies pushed into mass graves. It is some strange new disease a disease, they say, that can kill in minutes. The Chinese government says the rumors aren't true, but no one is allowed in or out of Tibet. At the Pentagon, Admiral James Curtiss is called to an emergency meeting. Satellite images prove that a massive genocide is underway, and an American spy has made a startling discovery. This is no disease. It's a weapons test.
Is there a sociopath on the loose in New York City? The NYPD believes there is. Who is Tilden, this man who claims to have been sexually abused as a child by his mother’s john? Was that same type of abuse, perpetrated this time by a heartless prostitute he’d hired for an afternoon of debauchery the trigger that ignited Tilden’s rage, sending him on a mission to eradicate all women of the night? More importantly, will NYPD’s top cop, Homicide Commander Lieutenant John. Driscoll put an end to the madness?
Is it medical malpractice, or is the attorney just another ambulance chaser? It’s 1995, and Houston orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jim Bob Brady has been sued for medical malpractice; a mysterious infection caused a knee replacement to end up as an amputation. Donovan Shaw, a ruthless plaintiff’s attorney, has taken the case and doesn’t seem bothered by the fact that he and Brady share a number of friends. “It’s not personal!” Shaw says. But it feels personal—especially when Shaw threatens, “I will do anything, and I mean anything, to win the case, even if I have to destroy you and that pretty wife of yours. I will stop at nothing. You remember that!”