Thunder Road - by Colin Holmes (Paperback)

About the Book

Short Summary: Chasing down a small time gambling debt in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp soon realizes that more than a few poker chips are at stake when he stumbles upon a conspiracy between the CIA, the USAF, and the mob aimed to cover up a secret of otherworldly proportions.

Book Synopsis

In this gamble, more than a few poker chips are at stake.

When an Army Air Force Major vanishes from his Top Secret job at the Fort Worth airbase in the summer of 1947, down-on-his-luck former Ranger Jefferson Sharp is hired to find him, because the Major owes a sizable gambling debt to a local mobster. The search takes Sharp from the hideaway poker rooms of Fort Worth's Thunder Road, to the barren ranch lands of New Mexico, to secret facilities under construction in the Nevada desert.

Lethal operatives and an opaque military bureaucracy stand in his way, but when he finds an otherworldly clue and learns President Truman is creating a new Central Intelligence Agency and splitting the Air Force from the Army, Sharp begins to connect dots. And those dots draw a straight line to a conspiracy aiming to cover up a secret that is out of this world⎯literally so.

Review Quotes

"[In this] intriguing debut . . . clear crisp prose . . . morphs from a western into a detective story with an overlay of conspiracy theories." --Publishers Weekly

"A carefully crafted and original suspense thriller of a read, Thunder Road by Colin Holmes is the stuff of which block-buster action/adventure movies are made. With many and unexpected plot twists and turns, Thunder Road is an inherently fascinating and entertaining novel . . ." --Midwest Book Review

"Sparkling 1940's dialogue, wry humor, an unpredictable yet coherent storyline, and a breezy style all his own, make Colin Holmes' somewhat spooky novel, Thunder Road, a winner. I'll be on the lookout for his next novel." --Rob Leininger, author of Killing Suki Flood and the Mortimer Angel "Gumshoe" series

"This genre-defying and enormously entertaining romp is Mickey Spillane meets Whitley Strieber meets Woody Allen. I can't remember when I've had so much plain old fun reading a book and just didn't want it to end." --Historical Novel Society, Editor's Choice

About the Author

Before the pandemic, Colin Holmes toiled in a beige cubical as a mid-level marketing and advertising manager for an international electronics firm. A recovering advertising creative director, he spent far too long at ad agencies and freelancing as a hired gun in the war for capitalism.

As an adman, Holmes has written newspaper classifieds, TV commercials, radio spots, trade journal articles and tweets. His ads have sold cowboy boots and cheeseburgers, 72-ounce steaks, and hazardous waste site clean-up services. He's encountered fascinating characters at every turn.

Now he writes novels, short stories and screenplays in an effort to stay out of the way and not drive his far too patient wife completely crazy. He is an honors graduate of the UCLA Writers Program, a former board member of the DFW Writers Workshop and serves on the steering committee of the DFW Writers Conference. He's a fan of baseball, barbeque, fine automobiles and unpretentious scotch.