Unpublished Novels

CHASING CHARLIE CHAN

A prequel to the Jake Diamond novels featuring Jimmy Pigeon, private investigator, Diamond's friend and mentor.

It is the summer of 1994, and most Americans are tuned into the impending Major League Baseball strike and the arrest of a former National Football League legend for murder.  When Pigeon's partner is discovered dead in their shared PI office, Jimmy is confronted with concerns much more personal and dangerous.

Jimmy's search for Lenny Archer's killer leads to a complex puzzle, with clues reaching back to 1940's Hollywood; its winners and losers, its movie stars and gangsters, its glamour and treachery.

GRAVESEND

The body of a five year old boy is found on the roof of a four-story brick apartment building in Brooklyn; offering few clues for NYPD detectives Vota, Samson and Murphy.  As more bodies are discovered, frightening connections become obvious; although the characteristics of the victims would suggest that the targets were chosen randomly.  If this is a serial killer; standard profiling techniques are out the window.  And without an apparent motive, the investigation is heading for a dead end before it can even get rolling.

As the three detectives struggle with the elusive aspects of the case they also need to deal with the day to day challenges of law enforcement and with the triumphs, failures and adversities in their personal lives.

Police and civilians, murderers and silent witnesses, the guilty and the innocent and those somewhere in between, cross paths unknowingly throughout the often dangerous, sometimes exotic, seldom uninteresting and always vibrant streets and backstreets of the Borough of Churches.

Works in Progress

CIRCLING THE RUNWAY

 San Francisco Detective Sergeant Johnson has always thought of Jake Diamond as resembling something you might scrape off your shoe.  But when Johnson needs to investigate someone in his own department, he is forced to ask for Jake's help. 

So begins an unlikely partnership.  Jake Diamond, unsuccessful film actor turned nominally effective private eye and Sergeant Rocky Johnson, street punk turned bald headed gorilla with a badge.  A duo that Neil Simon could have written a play about.

Vinnie Strings, Darlene Roman, Willie Dogtail, Tony Carlucci and a familiar cast of Diamond's allies and enemies are all on hand in the fourth installment of the irreverent Jake Diamond series.

UNTITLED CRIME NOVEL

Two families, originating in Sicily and settling on opposite coasts of the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, are involved in a blood fued spanning one hundred years and four generations.  

An epic American saga of criminals and law enforcers, culminating in a final showdown which may ultimately destroy one or both of these Italian-American families entirely.

Agents or Editors interested in these and other projects by J.L. Abramo are invited to contact the author.

jakediamond@att.net