Showing results by author "John M. Vermillion" in All Categories

It began innocently. A suspended manager of a Minor League baseball team, Jock Holden, uses his time away from the team as a hireling, his job to tear down three four-decades old mountainside hunting cabins. Hidden under support posts he discovers leather bags buried 40 years ago. The bounty has present-day value of one to several million dollars. Bags in hand, Holden thinks he’s pulled off a successful heist…but someone has watched him from the start. When this person threatens to spill the beans, Holden brutalizes her. Now he’s guilty of both grand theft and murder. A former player,...

Felix Forthright Fox: descended from fighters and coal miners. Troublemaker in school, little interest in schoolbooks. But combine an aptitude for practical engineering and a nose for business with unmatched work ethic, and the result was commercial success. As his holdings grew, his enemies became more resolute in stopping him. Everyman and absolute individual in the same person. Whether in his coal mines or on his wilderness preserve, opponents sought to block his every move, often through violence. The United Mine Workers put a bounty on his head, and threatened his family. Eco-...

Murders in Big Stone Gap, mayhem on the Wildlife Preserve, and Triple F feels the stress. A Georgia minister discovers an uncle has left him an Assisted Living Facility in Big Stone Gap. Problem is, Reverend Chuck Bumpers knows nothing about business, and the residents quickly conclude he's lazy, rude, unkind, and uncaring. Nobody in town likes or respects Bumpers. And Bumpers so despises the residents he devises a plan to murder them all. Felix Fox arrives in Big Stone Gap for his high school reunion at the same time Bumpers arrives. The ALF is home to Felix Fox's best friend, Powder ...

Former General and Governor Simon Pack appears to be in the background in the newest Pack novel, but in truth he’s giving new life to a young man who’s been betrayed repeatedly—in war, love, and on smokejumper fire lines. Josh Panchrest is now so deep into his melancholic state the only solution he can imagine is to turn to Pack, his former Superintendent at West Point. Josh was the lone survivor in a major operation to snatch a Taliban leader. Readjusting to the too-soft America he returns to after combat is difficult. He finds solace in the rugged, disciplined life of a smokejumper ...

Simon Pack’s protégé, Josh Panchrest, at age 29 has ferried through foster homes, suffered physical and psychic wounds in combat, stuck with an injured smokejumper during a night of horror, walked through a field of flames to save a mother and son, and suffered a career-ending injury. Now he again fights through all the setbacks seeking fulfillment in some new challenge. He has eyes on big-time football coaching, but after realizing that’s a pipe dream, he lands a job teaching and coaching at a small town high school. The town requires rejuvenation as much as Josh. A one-time economic...

A former Pack protégé flies to the Montana cabin of his mentor to seek approval to write the biography of the General/Governor/US Marshal. When Pack doesn't greet him at the airport, he goes to the cabin, where he finds his old commander bludgeoned and hogtied. Who ordered the attack, and why? At almost the same time, a cadre of distinguished officials decides it wants Pack to become a third-party candidate for President, so frustrated are they with the state of the nation. They wait for Pack's release from the hospital to plead their case. Pack relents, deciding to resign as US Marshal ...

In the heart of Silicon Valley, antifa kidnaps a Stanford student, the daughter of Wil Chambers, a man of exceptional wealth. Long ago, as football teammates at LSU, Wil and Cade Chase pledged mutual in extremis assistance. Cade drops his plans for transforming American secondary education and leaves Rockledge, not knowing when or if he will return. What follows is the toughest endeavor Cade has ever undertaken, because it challenges his conceptions of friendship, morality, right and wrong. Although this grisly tale begins with the kidnapping of Julie Chambers, it quickly morphs into ...

Welcome to the world of strong US Marshals, offbeat criminals, and unusual settings from Arizona to Honduras to south Florida. Simon Pack, former Marine General and Montana Governor, now leads the largest fugitive Task Force in the Marshals Service. The main characters interlock in three big cases. Pack’s boss is jealous of Pack in the extreme, stamping a bull’s eye on Pack’s back. But when the US Attorney General assigns a case directly to Pack, it’s clear the Director of the Marshals Service cannot fire Pack. The final case addresses a current event in today’s headlines, and how...

Tetu Palaita, American-Samoan giant, has been US Marshal Simon Pack’s most trusted friend for longer than any man. Someone murders Tetu’s family. Why was he the target? Or was he?Pack wants to avenge Tetu’s loss. His top priority becomes finding the blackguard who did this. Suspects abound. Join Pack as he drives to resolve a case that’s filled with futility until his crew discovers a valuable clue…an Elder Futhark, a ring which leads them to a Nordic religious sect that paves the investigative path ahead. At the end of the line, the Marshals close in on the man behind the murders...

What happens after he leaves the military? Cade Chase doesn’t have the answer. He winds up in Rockledge, a poor town in Appalachia. While helping an octogenarian benefactor, he encounters what could be a threat from squatters bedded down in forestland near his property. Turns out the more direct threat comes from brutish men who attack those squatters near his friend’s home. Two attacks on the campers propel Cade into action. With a stunning lady lawyer at his side, Cade quickly learns that the obvious problem is actually the lesser problem. Bringing to justice the people who murdered ...

Simon Pack's life has been a series of whipsaw S-turns: Marine General; West Point Superintendent; hobo; Governor of Montana; writer. Now restless, he leaves Montana with his new K-9, Keto, not knowing what's ahead. This is Pack's most acute turn yet. The former Governor and General finds the perfect opportunity to dig into a question that's bothered him for years: should we question a single individual's acquisition of a vast expanse of land in a short period? Pack thinks so, and meets people forced off land their families have lived on for ages. On behalf of the displaced, Pack clashes ...

In the waning days of his Governorship, Simon Pack learns he did not leave the Upper Yaak Valley of Montana in sound health. The area is teeming with criminal enterprises and countercultural elements. Not wanting to dump problems he believes he’s responsible for onto the new Governor, Pack burrows into the unique Upper Yaak to identify and root out those complicated troubles. A crooked Sheriff pins a murder on Pack, and his release from charges involves a colossal legal confrontation. After his release from confinement, Pack returns to the cauldron of the Yaak, this time to be taken ...

A horrid train wreck sets in motion a miserable chain of events for Simon Pack, Former Marine General and Governor of Montana. After dealing with the awful effects of the accident, Pack plumbs the depths of personal despair. Upon regaining his taste for life, he’s visited by a man from his past. The man who abducts Pack eventually is exposed as former Supersoldier and rogue agent who has murdered scores, including Americans, overseas. Now targets in America, including Pack, are fueling his vengeance-induced killing rampage. Pack needs to stop this Bad Man, Blaise Paschal. The action moves...