Act of Deceit: A Harlan Donnally Novel

“A talented writer who knows how to hook his readers from the opening line.” —Richard North Patterson

Author Steven Gore burst onto the international thriller scene with Final Target (“James Bond for grownups” —Cornelia Read) and solidified his reputation as one of the genre’s most exciting new voices with Absolute Risk (“A truly thrilling thriller” —San Jose Mercury News). With Act of Deceit, Gore boldly enters the crime fiction domain of Harlan Coben, Robert B. Parker, Stuart Woods, and Robert Crais, and immediately proves he can stand tall with the best of them. A heart-racing masterwork of mystery, thrills, and suspense that introduces a phenomenal new series protagonist, Harlan Donnally, Act of Deceit plunges the ex-San Francisco PD detective-turned-café owner into a deadly morass of murder, sex trafficking, and church corruption as he seeks the dark truth about the death of a sister of a dying friend.

Mt. Shasta is far from the San Franciscosidewalk on which Harlan Donnally’s lifenearly ended in a crossfire—

But all too close to a decades-old secretthat will force him into another.

The former detective swore he’d never play anyone’s postman. But a dying friend’s plea takes Donnally bearing a letter alive with tragedy toward a sister long dead—the victim of the bizarre criminality of a counterculture that had lost its way.

Stunned to learn that her killer was never prosecuted, Donnally soon finds himself in battle against a broken justice system and on a trail of evil into a dangerous borderland in which the falsely pious and the wealthy abuse the young and the poor. And though each step takes him farther down a perilous path that wrenches him between his inner demons and his mission to redeem a brother’s love, he won’t stop until he knows the truth.

For Donnally made a promise to a dead man, and he’ll keep it—or die trying.