about Ken's books

Private Investigator Tom Hickey, now an army corporal military assigned to the U.S./Mexico border, accompanies Private Clifford Rose to a Tijuana nightclub where Clifford claims they will find his sister Wendy.

The nightclub is aptly named Hell. Wendy, dancing naked on the stage, appears so lost and innocent, Tom agrees to help rescue her from the men her brother claims kidnapped the girl are holding her captive.

Her captors, Tom discovers, are led by a German occultist and financed by the powerful del Monte family. He comes to believe they are plotting a coup whose purpose is to give the Nazis a base from which to attack San Diego, home of the world's largest military/industrial presence.

After Tom learns he's considered AWOL and his attempts to alert the military of the danger are treated as nonsense, he declares a war of his own.

• a Private Eye Writers America Best First P.I. Novel

• "In The Loud Adios, Kuhlken proves he can write in the mystery genre as well as anyone today. The scenes are expertly structured and the prose is visual and tense. This is a writer fully in control of his craft." San Diego Union

• "... takes on an almost unbearable intensity, not in its mayhem but in its human beings and concerns." Chico News and Reviews

Read a chapter.

Read the hardback, or the trade paperback.
Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.

	THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES, Los Angeles, 1926 The modern world began in 1926, when Harry Chandler used the persuasive reach of his Los Angeles Times to assure that railroads were out, and cars were in. Since then, Hollywood films have delivered Los Angeles as a prototype for most of world's cities. In May of 1926, celebrity evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson went swimming at Ocean Park beach and vanished, presumed drowned. Millions mourned or prayed for her miraculous return. On June 23, she walked out of the Mexican desert and crossed the border into Douglas, Arizona. Though her kidnapped story convinced her followers, the district attorney didn’t buy it. He summoned her to a Grand Jury hearing, which was underway when a widely distribute pamphlet reported that a colored man was lynched and found hanging from an oak in Echo Park, only yards from Sister Aimee’s Angelus Temple. The victim was an old friend of Tom Hickey, leader of a dance orchestra, whose distress is aggravated because the police and popular media have apparently conspired to deny the crime occurred. Tom recently gave up attending USC, where he starred in football, in order to better raise and protect his sister Florence, a wild seventeen-year-old who fancies speakeasies. Aside from leading the band, Tom works days selling and delivering wholesale meat. Now he adds to his jobs the pursuit of killers, who may belong to the Ku Klux Klan, and the exposure of a city government in cahoots with media giants more dedicated to power and profit than to truth. The investigation leads Tom to Angelus Temple and Sister Aimee, who appears to befriend him and offer clues in a veiled and cryptic manner. When she announces an upcoming sermon entitled “The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles,” Tom sees the sermon topic as a clue. He easily compiles his own roster of candidates for the title. They include publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst; Harry Chandler, owner of the Times and a vast real estate empire; Sister Aimee herself; and Tom and Florence’s own well-connected mother, from whose wickedness he snatched Florence six years ago. The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles tells a gripping story about memorable characters and resurrects a time and place that, perhaps more than any, created the modern world. • As usual, Kuhlken works real people and events into the story (evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson and Randolph Hearst, for example) and vividly anchors the reader in the story’s time and place. The social consciousness and the L.A. setting across decades make this series a fine choice for fans of Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins novels. Booklist • Kuhlken mixes historical and fictional characters with an ease that will remind many of Max Allan Collins's Nate Heller series (True Crime, etc.). He's equally adept at melding the murder inquiry with Hickey's struggles with his dysfunctional family. Publishers' Weekly • "Kuhlken demonstrates his command of keeping a story moving with a meticulously thought-out plot while populating it with believable characters." - Library Journal, starred review Read a couple chapters. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
	THE LOUD ADIOS, San Diego, 1943 Private Investigator Tom Hickey, now an army corporal military assigned to the U.S./Mexico border, accompanies Private Clifford Rose to a Tijuana nightclub where Clifford claims they will find his sister Wendy. The nightclub is aptly named Hell. Wendy, dancing naked on the stage, appears so lost and innocent, Tom agrees to help rescue her from the men her brother claims kidnapped the girl are holding her captive. Her captors, Tom discovers, are led by a German occultist and financed by the powerful del Monte family. He comes to believe they are plotting a coup whose purpose is to give the Nazis a base from which to attack San Diego, home of the world's largest military/industrial presence. After Tom learns he's considered AWOL and his attempts to alert the military of the danger are treated as nonsense, he declares a war of his own. • a Private Eye Writers America Best First P.I. Novel • "In The Loud Adios, Kuhlken proves he can write in the mystery genre as well as anyone today. The scenes are expertly structured and the prose is visual and tense. This is a writer fully in control of his craft." San Diego Union • "... takes on an almost unbearable intensity, not in its mayhem but in its human beings and concerns." Chico News and Reviews Read a chapter. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
	THE VENUS DEAL, San Diego, 1942 Following Pearl Harbor, Tom Hickey and a partner open a supper club, Rudy's Hacienda, in downtown San Diego, a few blocks from the harbor. The club begins to make Tom wealthy. He's glad to be making money. His wife Madeline, part gold-digger, has wearied of living in decent but modest circumstances. Tom's ticket to wealth is Cynthia Moon, the club's jazz singer who enraptures admirals, generals, and tycoons. When she disappears, it's not only concern for the girl that sends him searching. The hunt carries him to the village of Mount Shasta and into the web of a Hindu-inspired occultist. Though he doesn't find Cynthia, he deduces her motive for disappearing. And he learns the first part of her desperate plan, which sends him to Denver in search of a hit man. Back in San Diego, he deduces the rest of her plan. He speeds across the border in hopes of arriving in time to stop her, and perhaps break the spell of her madness and despair. ▪ “Kuhlken’s re-creation of wartime America is right on the mark.” San Diego Union Tribune ▪ "Mysticism, a journal full of poetic folklore, and the noir-like dialog push an especially complex plot from start to finish. Along with Gaylord Dold and Max Allan Collins, Kuhlken joins the ranks of P.I. authors presenting their character in a historical setting and pulling the deed off with skill and grace. Highly recommended." Mystery Scene Read a chapter. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
	THE ANGEL GANG, Incline Village, Nevada, 1950 Tom and Wendy Hickey are attempting the happily ever after routine, in their shack on the shore of Lake Tahoe. Wendy is pregnant and fragile, and Tom intends to put nothing above caring for her. Then Cynthia Moon calls. She used to sing at Rudy's Hacienda, a San Diego nightclub in which Tom was a partner. She begs him to come and help clear her of an arson charge. Wendy urges him to go. Tom speeds to San Diego, intending to return within a couple days. But when Cynthia blames an L.A. mob for the arson, and Tom begins snooping, Wendy disappears. The hunt for his wife sends Tom back to Tahoe and to the lakeside mansion of a casino mogul. He takes the man hostage and demands he use all his powers to deliver Wendy. Back in Southern California, Tom's partner Leo Weiss, prompted by a little evidence and a big grudge, pursues the arson investigation into the territory of the ruthless Mickey Cohen mob. ▪ "Tom Hickey is one of detective fiction's most original and intriguing creations." San Francisco Chronicle ▪ “The angels of the title intercede to save most, but not all, of the worthy characters in this gritty, brutal tale, which is tenderized by the PI's near palpable devotion to his wife.” Publishers Weekly Read a chapter. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
	THE DO-RE-MI, a small town Northern California folk festival, 1972 Evergreen is a different town than the last time Clifford Hickey visited, only a year ago. Then it was an Eden, a garden of peace and delights, of music and lovely hippies sharing all they had. Now it's the site of a range war. Bikers have descended upon the place to poach from the hippies' marijuana plantations. And a home town boy gets murdered the very night Clifford arrives. Clifford, a recent college graduate, and his brother Alvaro, are scheduled to perform at the Evergreen folk festival. But when sheriffs crash the brothers' reunion at Alvaro's camp amongst the redwoods, Alvaro runs. In the effort to clear his brother, who is charged with the murder of a sheriff's nephew, Clifford makes deadly enemies of a gang of outlaw bikers led by a miniature sociopath. When he seeks help from hippies living in Evergreen's communes, they shun him. So do the locals. Which means he's on his own, unless the girlfriend of the murdered boy chooses to trust him, or unless he decides to call for help from Pop, detective Tom Hickey. But Tom's busy trying to keep Clifford's mama from returning to the sanitarium. ▪ a Shamus Award finalist and January Magazine Best Book of 2006 ▪ "Crime, punishment and redemption. Kuhlken's sixth is by far his best." Kirkus Reviews ▪ "Kuhlken's fourth mystery to feature the endearing Hickey clan brings the social and culturalscene of the period vividly to life." Publisher's Weekly Read a chapter. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
	THE VAGABOND VIRGINS, Baja California, 1979 A Holy Virgin, or a convincing fraud, appears in Mexico, dedicating herself to the overthrow of the corrupt and tyrannical Partido Revolucionario Institutional. And a woman who claims to be the Virgin’s sister brings San Diego law student and private investigator Alvaro Hickey a chance to help reform the country of his birth. Alvaro's got personal reasons for helping exquisite, cultured, and other-worldly Lourdes Shuler find her "sister." And his motives for helping defeat the PRI go so deep, they override the danger of challenging a power that, if he includes all the cops and bureaucrats on their payroll, must be at least a million strong. And that number doesn't count the foreigners, whoever invests in Mexico and depends upon deals made with the PRI. Vast corporations, half the world’s governments, drug cartels, and maybe the Catholic church. ▪ “The Vagabond Virgins delivers a story in the tradition of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and B. Traven’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Kuhlken knows the brutal reality of border Mexico, and makes you believe that amidst the violence and corruption, a miraculous woman can still make a difference." Gene Riehl, author of Quantico Rules and Sleeper. ▪ "A fast-moving adventure that effectively combines mainstream historical fiction with the conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel. Kuhlken has another winner." Booklist Read a chapter. Read the hardback, or the trade paperback. Read the ebook, or listen to the audio.
11-15-10