The Good Detective
Publisher Putnam, March 19, 2019
Detective P.T. Marsh is up against the toughest case of his career. And he’s pretty sure he killed the prime suspect.
P.T. was a rising star on the police force of Mason Falls, Georgia–until his wife and young son died in an accident. Since that night, he’s lost the ability to see the line between smart moves and disastrous decisions. Such as when he agrees to help a woman out by confronting her abusive boyfriend. When the next morning he gets called to the scene of his newest murder case, he is stunned to arrive at the house of the very man he beat up the night before. He could swear the guy was alive when he left, but can he be sure? What’s certain is that his fingerprints are all over the crime scene.
The trouble is only beginning. When the dead body of a black teenager is found in a burned-out field with a portion of a blackened rope around his neck, P.T. realizes he might have killed the number-one suspect of this horrific crime.
Amid rising racial tension and media scrutiny, P.T. uncovers something sinister at the heart of the boy’s murder–a conspiracy leading all the way back to the time of the Civil War. Risking everything to unravel the puzzle even as he fights his own personal demons, P.T. races headlong toward an incendiary and life-altering showdown.
“First fiction is dangerous business: many aspire, few succeed. Not so with John McMahon’s debut, THE GOOD DETECTIVE. Tight, fast and addictive I blistered this book in a single day. It has everything top drawer crime fiction demands: murder, conflict and a damaged, compelling hero, all delivered in prose so crisp and clean McMahon presents like an old pro. If he had a second novel on the shelves I’d be reading it right now.”
–John Hart, author of King of Lies, Redemption Road and The Hush
“In The Good Detective, McMahon skillfully blends the old and the new and weaves it into spun gold.”
–Reed Farrel Coleman, author of Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
“The Good Detective is a debut with all of the ingredients: snappy procedural details, a sharp sense of place in the Deep South, and relentless momentum. John McMahon’s outstanding first in the series introduces a sardonic and sympathetic lead in P.T. Marsh, and launches both McMahon and Marsh into what promises to be a great career in crime fiction.”
–Glen Erik Hamilton, author of Past Crimes
“Racial strife, dirty cops and evil perpetrated by a mysterious secret order for over 150 years all go together to make this one of the best stories with a southern setting that I have read since I read the last Greg Iles.”
— Nancy McFarland at Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC
