Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

 (A Mike Stoneman Thriller, KDP, 2019). ISBN: 9781700401083 Several months ago, I had the opportunity to read and review the first book in this five-book series, Righteous Assassin . I was impressed with the author’s depth of research and craft in deftly working within the narrow tropes of the serial killer police procedural to create a high-stakes, page-turning, still-something-new narrative featuring well-rendered characters and an interesting villain. I closed the review with my hope that future books would further illuminate the tough, veteran detective that is the hero of the novels, Mike Stoneman, and Chapman does not disappoint. In this second novel, the serial killer is replaced by a set of shadowy rogue cops who are operating a drug and prostitution ring out of a seedy hotel. This, the author tells us at novel’s end, is based on a true story where the ringleader was generating two million dollars a year from a similar operation. If you have seen The Batman , you know...

  (A Mike Stoneman Thriller, KDP, 2018). ISBN: 9781723898730 One of the challenges and joys of genre writing is employing a plethora of tried-and-true tropes while bringing in something original and ultimately unexpected. This is hard enough to do with larger genres like the crime thriller, never mind drilling down into smaller loops of the spiral, into the police procedural and, in the case of Righteous Assassin , into the serial killer police procedural. Within a few pages of Righteous Assassin , I felt deeply at home—not only because I teach about and have written numerous thrillers for the stage, page, screen, and Escape Rooms—but because Chapman was employing all of the genre’s prevalent tropes. His lead character, Mike Stoneman, is a hard-nosed Manhattan police detective who is single, impatient, and given to holding everyone around him to the high standards to which he holds himself. Consider his last name, Stone man, which is like Willy Lo man in Arthur Miller’s Death o...