Category Archives: Alston, E. B.

E. B. Alston. Hammer Spade and the Merchants of Death.Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing, 2007.

In this, the third novel in the Hammer Spade Series, Spade is asked to join a law enforcement operation against a large drug organization that hopes to set up headquarters on the North Carolina coast.  The money is good, but the mission is extremely dangerous–Spade and his crew are to hunt down and kill members of an international criminal organization who murdered six federal agents and a high-ranking DEA official just outside Bath, North Carolina. It’s meant to be a long-term assignment because the DEA wants to lull the organization’s kingpin into thinking that the locals are too dumb and inattentive to know what he’s up to.  Once the new organization is established–and they’ve knocked out all the local dealers–Spade and his crew will make their move.  But there are complications–an attractive DEA agent who may have a personal motive for the killings and the need to make Mr. Big’s death look as though it was something other than a government hit-job.  This is not an easy assignment.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2007, Alston, E. B., Beaufort, Coast, Hyde, Novels in Series, Suspense/Thriller, Tyrrell

E. B. Alston. Hammer Spade and the Case of the Missing Husband. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2006.

Although he didn’t know it at the time, it was Hammer Spade’s lucky day when Alonia Lockheart walked into his office and asked him to find her missing husband.  Alonia is an internationally-known model and drop-dead gorgeous. Her husband is a writer of no particular note, who secludes himself in a remote cabin for months at a time when he is writing. Alonia offers Spade $50,000 to pay for the search and offers her sister Minerva as fill-in office help while he is away.  While Spade is going back and forth from Durham to Georgia, where the hubby appears to be hold up, Minerva spruces up his office, gets his streetwise assistant to shape up, and drums up an amazing amount of business for Spade’s small, undistinguished firm.  The mystery of why a man would leave a gorgeous woman like Alonia is solved, but Spade’s adventures have just begun.

Check this title’s availability in the UNC-Chapel Hill Library catalog.

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Filed under 2000-2009, 2006, Alston, E. B., Durham, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont

E. B. Alston. The Hammer Spade Series

I can’t help but like a series that came about, in part, from a librarian’s suggestion.  Dorothy Hodder, one of the great librarians at New Hanover County Public Library, suggested to E. B. Alston, already the author of two thrillers, that he put more intrigue into his books.  This led Mr. Alston to start a story with a private detective as the main character. The story became the novel that begins this series.

Hammer Spade is a detective and bail bondsman living in Durham, North Carolina. Like many fictional private detectives, his office is in a seedy part of town and his personal life is bleak.  The first novel in the series introduces Hammer; his love interest Alonia Lockheart; Shidee Callaway, who is Hammer’s streetwise assistant; and several members of Alonia’s interesting family.  These characters reappear in later novels where they are joined by Hammer’s friends, Dave Quigley and Jack Kane.  Kane, like Hammer, is a Desert Storm veteran.

Each novel opens in North Carolina, as Hammer is asked to handle a case, but the action often shifts to other–and far more exotic–locales. South Africa, Russia, Kuwait, Tibet, and Brazil are just some of the places that Hammer’s cases take him.  Only the books with a full North Carolina setting have individual entries in this blog.

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Filed under Alston, E. B., Durham, Mystery, Novels in Series, Piedmont, Series