BALEFIRE
... was my first published novel, and remains my favorite [although DOUBLE BLIND comes in a close second, and I have to confess a perverse fondness for THE ALCHEMIST], if only because it's the most frightening book I've written on a personal level. Why so frightening? Simply because police officers are almost never trained to deal with professional terrorists, for the perfectly logical reason that it is highly unlikely that they will ever run across such an individual in their entire careers. Instead, they're trained to deal with drunk drivers, thoughtless drug dealers, petty thieves, inept burglars, and the like.
So when a real, honest-to-god professional terrorist named Thanatos shows up along the shoreline of Huntington Beach, California, intent on destroying the scenic beach city as a demonstration against the 1984 Olympic games, the local cops have no idea what's happening, and therefore don't stand much of a chance. Which puts them in a terrible situation when they're forced to chose between defending their city, their families ... and themselves.
A kind review from Playboy:
"You'll go from the first chapter to the final sentence
before you remember to get up for a sandwich ... beautifully plotted."
From John Saul:
"Balefire comes at you like a firestorm. The action starts fast
and then accelerates through to the last page."
And Publisher's Weekly: "A real heart-attack of a climax!"
THE ALCHEMIST
... is the story of Dr. David Isaac, a brilliant young University of California professor of organic chemistry who came up with the idea of making slight structural changes in hallucinogenic drugs that would make them perfectly legal to sell, but didn't anticipate the impact this first-ever designer drug might have on the dealers making millions from the sale of perfectly illegal drugs.
Hiding behind his underworld identity as the elusive Alchemist, Isaac, the creator of the wondrous sex-enhancing analogs code-named Power-Rainbow and Rainbow-Vision, finds himself being sought by the Mob and a retired U.S. Army 'General' turned drug dealer, and protected by a terribly dangerous drug kingpin named Jimmy Pilgrim and his psychotic, knife-freak enforcer named Rainbow. Increasingly paranoid as he falls prey to his own increasingly powerful chemical creations, Isaac has no idea that his life will ultimately hinge on the actions of a hapless street kid named Eugene Bylighter, a beautiful young hooker named Skylight, a pair of terrifying snakes, and a timid and frightened kangaroo rat named Mini-Cooper.
The heroes: DEA special agents Ben Koda and Charlie Shannon, and DEA tech agent Sandy Mudd, a mismatched team of covert investigators fiercely determined to find this fabled Alchemist, hunt down the General, Pilgrim and Rainbow, and avenge the horrible deaths of two of their fellow agents. But to pull it all off, they will ultimately have to do something that is unthinkably dangerous: make a one-pound buy off Jimmy Pilgrim.
Oh, and just to make things interesting, I added a young and naive forensic scientist who --- knowing nothing of the General, Pilgrim, Rainbow, or the Mob --- agrees to pose as an underground chemist in order to help a local narcotics sergeant find the lab source of this terribly dangerous and enticing new analog. But not knowing how to make drugs, she seeks out her ex-professor of organic chemistry who, she hopes, will teach her some believable magic tricks.
Where did I get the idea for this book? Well, you see, some time after I'd joined the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, and at the suggestion of the Vice/narcotics detail, I went to see my ex-organic chemistry professor at UCR ....
"Tense ... fast .... violent ... entirely plausible, because of Goddard's brutal attention to detail and police procedure."
--- The San Diego Union.
According to the Tacoma News Tribune: "The meanest, dirtiest, knock-them-down, pick-them-up and sock-em-again book around."
Or, as Publisher's Weekly put it: "There's enough sex and violence here to stock a miniseries."
Well, that's probably overstating the situation just a bit, but I did try.
DIGGER
... is the story of Henry Culver, an ex-CIA surveillance specialist who joins the Fairfax County (VA) Police Department as a police officer/criminalist in order to escape some unpleasant memories from his earlier profession. Unfortunately for Henry, he never quite manages to escape his past. And his refusal to assist his former employers in one of their nefarious plots results in his being targeted by a thoroughly warped and homicidal burglar who goes after his victims through the crawl spaces of their homes, cuts a trap door in the flooring, installs tiny hinges, razor-cuts through the carpeting, and then waits for them like a trap-door spider.
But just to throw things off a bit, you'll find a genuine CIA hero in the mix.
The trick is to figure out who ... and why.
And in the process, try not to think too much about the crawl space scene.
Note: for reasons that were a bit confusing at the time, my publisher had me re-write DIGGER. The new version is titled CHEATER..