Works by
Sam Reaves
(Aka Dominic Martell)
(Writer)

Writing as Sam Reaves

Cooper MacLeish Series

• A Long Cold Fall (1991, UK  US)
  A Long Cold Fall was Sam Reaves's debut effort and earned widespread acclaim as a strong first novel ("…a smartly paced mystery, full of terse, adrenalized action and punchy writing", according to People). The book introduces Cooper MacLeish, a Chicago taxi driver who survived a tour with the army in Vietnam and has never quite settled to anything since then. In A Long Cold Fall Cooper learns of the apparent suicide of Vivian Horstmann, an old flame from whom he has heard nothing for many years. Cooper tracks down her runaway son, who he suspects may be his, and the boy insists it was no suicide. Cooper's efforts to establish the truth bring him into the sights of some very unpleasant people, and he will need all his hard-earned toughness to survive.

• Fear Will Do It (1992, UK  US)
  Fear Will Do It finds Cooper is living with his Puerto Rican girlfriend Diana. Diana has a past, and out of it comes Tommy Thorne, an itinerant guitarist who has found easier ways to make money than by playing music. Tommy needs someone as cut-out in a blackmail scam, and Diana's elected because Tommy's got the goods on her own youthful indiscretions. When the scam blows up and both the cops and the target's hired guns are on Diana's trail, Cooper has to move fast and strike hard.

• Bury It Deep (1993, UK  US)
  Bury It Deep takes Cooper into the muddy waters of Chicago politics via his friendship with Melvin Moreland, an ambitious but unlucky reporter for a big Chicago daily who is determined to break his first really big story. When Moreland asks Cooper to come along to watch his back at a midnight rendezvous with a nameless source, the first of several bodies turns up just before the cops do. Cooper is forced to take time out from his mid-life crisis (Diana wants him out of the cab) to help Moreland untangle the ensuing intrigues, which feature missing tapes, code-named blackmail victims, dirty pool and dirtier politics, and a killer with a limp and a nasty way with a fondue skewer.

• Get What's Coming (1995, UK  US)
  Cooper has a new gig as chauffeur and factotum to Regis Swanson, a wealthy Chicago real estate developer, and when Swanson's prodigal son is killed in what looks like a drug deal gone wrong, Cooper has to put in a little overtime shielding his boss from zealous drug enforcers both of the federal and the criminal variety. Along the way he will find out the truth about how Swanson's son died and get a close look at the ugly realities of the Drug War.

Dooley Trilogy

1. Dooley's Back (2002, UK  US)
   Dooley's back in town after eight years in Mexico, and already he's making waves, helping a would-be rapist take a five-story shortcut, saving the criminal justice system a lot of trouble. Dooley used to be a cop, and he would still be one if the system hadn't failed him when it counted most; after taking the law into his own hands, Dooley had to take off. Now he wants to come home, but things have changed- people die, marriages fail, and friends get into trouble. Dooley's old partner Roy has a gambling problem, and a cop with a gambling problem means a cop with a mob problem. Dooley's going to try to make everything right again, but he's going to find that playing God is not as easy as it seems.
   
   Dooley's Back marks the return of Sam Reaves to the bookstores after a hiatus writing as Dominic Martell. Fans of Reaves's Cooper MacLeish series will find the same hard nosed-approach to crime and punishment and the same street-wise view of Chicago in Dooley's Back.

2. Homicide 69 (2006, UK  US)
   It's the summer of 1969, and veteran Chicago homicide detective Mike Dooley is investigating the brutal torture-murder of a young woman. The victim is a former Playboy bunny and mobster's girlfriend. Dooley suspects this is more than a sex killing, which leads him into the deep waters of mob intrigue and political corruption.
   
   Homicide 69 is a gripping novel about a man, his family, and his times: As Dooley, whose own youth was sacrificed in the Pacific in World War II, scans the news for hopeful portents regarding his son Kevin, a Marine in the thick of the fighting in Vietnam, he sees the world changing before his eyes. The moon landing, Woodstock, the Manson murders, and riots in the streets provide a backdrop for the personal and professional crises precipitated by Dooley's stubborn refusal to give up on a crime nobody but him wants solved.

3. Untitled (In progress)

Stand-Alone Booka

• Mean Town Blues (2008, UK  US)
  Tommy McLain's a Kentucky boy just back from a rough tour in Iraq, trying to make a go of civilian life in Chicago. He's a good friend to have if you're a young woman being stalked by a creep with some heavy connections-- but Chicago may not be ready for the skills and reactions Tommy brought home from the war.

Writing as Dominic Martell

1. Lying Crying Dying (1998, UK  US)
   Lying Crying Dying introduces Pascual Rose, a repentant ex-terrorist trying to make sense of his life after defecting and selling out his former comrades in the European terrorist underground of the 1980's. Pascual is lying low in Barcelona when a nova explodes in his cosmos-- Katixa reappears. She is the only one he never gave up, the one woman he ever loved. Katixa wants out now too, and she is on the run with a suitcase full of cash hijacked from an ETA kidnapping to start a new life somewhere far away-- with Pascual. But nothing is what it seems, and when Pascual realizes that Katixa is lying to him, can the crying and the dying be far behind?

2. The Republic of Night (1999, UK  US)
   The Republic of Night finds Pascual still haunted by his past, as French intelligence agents locate him and make him an offer he can't refuse, to come to Paris and put the finger on an old comrade, a long-disappeared Syrian terrorist who seems to have surfaced as a fixer for a shady Russian consortium. Pascual would just as soon not know what business the consortium has with a hatchet-face Algerian general who may be staging Islamist massacres in Paris to cover his tracks, but an exiled Algerian journalist wants him to help her find out, and Pascual has always had trouble saying no to a pair of lovely dark eyes. This time, however, it could cost him dearly.

3. Gitana (2001, UK  US )
   Pascual is keeping his head down, tending bar in a hole-in-the-wall tavern in Barcelona's Old City and consorting with Gypsies and other outsiders. One of them, an enigmatic flamenco cantaora named Sara, has seriously weakened his resolve to avoid sentimental adventures. He is just beginning to think he has outrun his past when an American journalist turns up dead with Pascual's name in his pocket. The police want to know why, and when a second killing strikes at the heart of his sheltering community, Pascual knows he cannot hide his head in the sand. He will need all his old survival skills as well as a little help from his Gypsy friends to unravel an old but still potent scandal before it destroys him and everyone he loves.