Rick Adelmann Books In Order

Publication Order of MG&M Detective Agency Mysteries Books

Publication Order of MG&M Detective Agency Mysteries Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Anthologies

(Bio written by Rick – thanks so much Rick!!!)

Rick was born in Weehawken, NJ, raised in Wayne Township, NJ, then carted off to Cleveland, Ohio, at the tender age of ten. This was a major turning point in his life. Rick lived a ‘Leave it to Beaver’ type childhood in Wayne. His fond memories of living in the country, close friendships, fishing in the nearby creek, and playing baseball became a part of my life. His love of writing started when Rick was twelve years old. His sister of five and her friends wanted to put on a play for their parents. She asked him to write a script for the play. So, he did; after a crowd-pleasing performance in the family basement, the writing bug hit him square between the eyes. Rick’s creative juices bubbled over into reams of paper. He started writing short stories and novellas in every genre. His favorite at the time was paranormal stories with a twist.

All that bubbling simmered when He enlisted in the USAF in 1971. Being a part of an F-4 Fighter squadron as a Life Support Tech holds fond memories for him. He spent two years in Alaska, where hiking and camping in the wildest country he had ever experienced brought on a greater love for nature than he previously held. The final year and a half were spent in California’s high desert. It was the opposite, yet just as gratifying an experience as Alaska’s.

Four years later, he found himself a civilian again and spent the next year traveling the country in his 1968 lime-green Plymouth Duster. As he entered Victorville, CA, he checked his ready cash and decided he needed a job. He quickly found one at a finance company. He began repossessing cars and furniture, then moved to write loans. Another significant change was in store for the fancy-free young man. The manager invited him to a family gathering and introduced him to his tall, slender, beautiful sister. WAM!! He was hooked. Two months after a whirlwind romance, he and Gayle were married. After another month, they became prospective parents. Forty-seven years later, they’re still happily married with two daughters, a granddaughter, and a grandson. He and Gayle are inseparable!

Rick acquired a BA degree in History from Cal State San Bernardino during these years of wedded bliss. The degree came in handy when he decided to go back to writing in earnest. As a result, Rick began a series of historical mysteries based on the Jazz Age.
The team of Sherwood (Woodie) Garth and the recently married couple Major James and Anneka Mallory became the MG&M Detective Agency. He was fortunate enough to be offered a contract from The Columbine Publishing Co. for a series of mystery novels. His first outing was The Greek Coins Affair. He’s now an Amazon Best Selling Author of nine books in the series, with number ten sitting on the publisher’s desk. He has started writing number ten. And he keeps on writing!

Now, they live in El Mirage, AZ, (back to a small town), where he loves gardening and creating a miniature village for his Boogie Bears, Bunnies, Frogs, and Leprechauns. Rick also enjoys hiking, bicycling, pampering my Dachshund, Cookie, and following the AZ Diamondbacks, the CA Angels. Most importantly, Rick and Gayle are active members of Westside Church of God in Glendale, AZ, at which he belong to a men’s group that serves the community, and Gayle serves at the church food bank.

Web Site: http://www.rickadelmann.com/

List of Published books:
1. Published 2020, The Greek Coins Affair
A bitterly cold winter in 1919 Cleveland, Ohio, brings a Pinkerton Agent, Mr. Sherwood Garth, and retired army Major James Mallory together under odd circumstances. Garth is hired to find the missing brother of the wealthy Spellman sisters and return the bag of diamonds he carted away. Garth requests the aid of Major Mallory in procuring both the brother and the diamonds.
In the process, the body of Henry Spellman, the brother, is discovered in an abandoned barn on the Spellman property. The investigation leads to an abundance of suspects to sort through. Henry was not a liked or trusted man. His traveling companions, business associates, family members, and even the household staff have motives to kill Mr. Spellman.
The search takes the two detectives into local jazz clubs, skid row bars, and the back alleys of Cleveland and Medina, Ohio, before they find the killers and thieves.

2. Published 2020, The Hilltop Ranch Affair
On the eve of James Mallory’s wedding to Anneka Larsson, the major receives an invitation to a reunion with Army comrades he served with at the beginning of his career in Wyoming. It will be held at his former commanding officer’s ranch, Hilltop Ranch, in Wyoming. Anneka, a lovely, open-minded woman, agrees that a trip to the wilds of Wyoming would suffice as a honeymoon. After the small intimate wedding, off they go by train to the wild west.
By the second day of the gathering, the remote, secluded ranch is snowbound by a late winter blizzard. So after that, the bodies start to pile up. One of the guests, staff, or family members is killing the guests. With no law enforcement at hand, Garth and Mallory take on the responsibility of finding and stopping the killer. Anneka, a wise and modern woman of the new decade, lends a hand and earns respect and friendship of the chauvinistic Sherwood Garth.

3. Published 2020, The Blue Sky Affair

James and Anneka Mallory find a home in Beverly Hills, California, where they and Sherwood Garth formally join together as the MG&M Detective Agency. Garth had found and bought a beach house on the Santa Monica beach with the dual purpose of being the agency’s office and his home. Fred and Elizabeth Burmeister, Major Mallory’s guardians as he grew up, and Gerda and Greta Rosencranz, Anneka’s younger twin sisters, had moved west with the newlyweds and are living in the hacienda. The Mallorys are invited by their new next-door neighbor, movie producer Hew Sizemore, to a formal dinner at his estate. The party included the who’s-who of Hollywood. Guests include Charley Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Greta Garbo.
The ending ends with Jim being offered a part in Sizemore’s latest western being filmed in Apple Valley. The major takes the part, and he and his wife drive up to the high desert. Before any film is shot, the director is. Made to look like a suicide, the circumstance seems odd to Jim and Anneka. They determined that the shooting death was murder.
Producer Sizemore wants a quick answer to the question of who killed his director and hires MG&M to solve it. Garth is called, and to chase begins. As they start asking questions, it doesn’t take long to discover the gossip, infighting, and egos intrinsic to the film business. After dealing with bootleggers, flappers, and the employees of a speakeasy, Mallory, Garth, and Mallory set their trap to catch a killer.

4. Published, 2020, The San Carlos Affair

The private investigators of MG&M Detective Agency are settling into their new homes in southern California. Sherwood, now called Woodie, Garth has a new girlfriend, Victoria Davis. The owner of Davis Fine Jewelers on San Carlos Avenue and the epitome of the Jazz Age. She’s living the flapper lifestyle of the 1920s. However, last year, Vicky’s father, Ashton Davis, was found dead at the San Carlos Businessman’s Association gathering. Vicky does not believe his death by falling down the stairs in her home was an accident, but murder. So, she asks Garth to solve the case for her.
Meanwhile, Anneka and her sisters are looking for a place to open a Swedish restaurant on San Carlos Avenue. Asking questions around the neighborhood brings to light dark evil secrets about the area. These secrets tie in with Ashton Davis’s murder. Neighboring businesses and the people working in the area fill a suspect list that MG&M will little down to find the killer.

5. Published 2021, The Forgotten Murder Affair

The Forgotten Murder Affair takes a turn to the paranormal. It begins in the year 2020. Oliver and Maryjane Janson, a retired couple, drive from Phoenix to a well-known bed and breakfast in Riverside, California. The Stroheim Mansion was remodeled into a guest retreat years ago, and the Jansons simply want a relaxing weekend. They settle into their room for the night. The next morning they awake in the same house, but one hundred years earlier. The day in 1920 when Jerome Stroheim and his wife were murdered. According to the history of the house, the murder was never solved.
Jim and Anneka Mallory and their friend Woodie Garth were invited to a weekend bash at the Stroheim house. Along with them, about a dozen guests arrive for the bash. Ollie and MJ Janson know about MG&M and convince them they are indeed from the future, sent back to prevent the murder, or solve it. The guests and family members all have reason to want Jerome dead. It is no easy task to decide who the killer is and what to do about it.

6. Published 2021, The Irish Manor House Affair

When Killian O’Donnell immigrated to the US with his large family, he ordered their manor house disassembled, brick by brick moved, and reassembled on an ocean cliff near Dana Point, California. Years later, an aging Killian is haunted by specters of soldiers, threatening him each night. Certain members of the clan believe the old man has lost his mind and wants to put him away in an asylum. Those family members also want to control the family fortune.
Killian’s son, Ryan, believes something sinister is happening and hires MG&M to sort it out for him and his father. Garth and the Mallorys arrive at the manor house to investigate and discover far more than ghostly pranks. They find lost gold, crooked soothsayers, perverse family members, and murder.

7. Published 2021, The Amazing Esmeralda Affair

There have been two weddings in the Mallory-Rosencranz household. Greta is now the wife of Captain Reed Bennett of the San Ricardo PD, and her twin sister Gerda married rancher Clint Rogers of Chino. So, of course, both girls moved out, leaving young Emma, Jim and Anneka’s adopted daughter, alone. A carnival has come to town, so the Mallorys decide to take Emma for the day to explore the sideshow and enjoy the rides. The three have a wonderful day when they spot the tent of The Amazing Esmeralda and decide to pay a visit. However, the sideshow seer is closed. They find that odd. It’s Sunday, the busiest day for a carnival.
They learn the answer. Esmeralda comes from the tent and explains through tears that her son was kidnapped by Chicago thugs. If she cannot tell the mob boss the names of the ten winning horses in next week’s race, they will kill her boy. Unfortunately, since Esmeralda is not a legitimate psychic, it would be impossible for her to come up with those names.
Jim and Anneka promise her that they will find her son and free him before the deadline arrives. They call Woodie and MG&M goes to work to find the boy before it’s too late.

8. Published 2022, The Hanged Man Affair

It’s the summer of 1921, and Garth is enjoying a day at the beach with the entire Mallory clan. The day is interrupted by a telegram from a former colleague from Garth’s Secret Service days. He has been requested to come to Texas and help solve an old case.
Thirty-three years prior, there was a bloody shootout at a remote stagecoach stop. Three men had been killed, and fifteen-year-old Tommy Humphrey escaped with his life. Since he survived and ran off, it was concluded he was the killer. Now he has been arrested, but Woodie’s ex-partner doesn’t believe he’s the killer and asks MG&M to prove it.
It appears to be an impossible task until they delve into the past and find strange occurrences that day and more than one answer to who the killer could be.
If Humphrey’s story is to be believed, the ruthless killer was once hanged from a tree outside the stagehouse. Now the hanged man has come back for revenge.

9. Published 2022, The Missing Heiress Affair.

The twenty-three-year-old heiress of the Thornton-Hayes Cruise line, Louise Hayes, was vacationing at the Beverly Hills Hotel. On the second day in California, she catches a taxi to drive her to Los Angeles to do some shopping. It was the last anyone had seen her since. The rich and influential father of the girl, Lincoln Hayes, takes an express train to LA and finds MG&M. He hires them to find the girl and keep it out of the press and away from the police. No publicity would be tolerated.
The facts point elsewhere despite Lincoln Hayes’s assurance that his daughter merely ran away. As usual, many suspects would like to see Louise disappear or, worse yet, die. The case takes MG&M from Los Angeles up the coast to San Francisco and back again before they uncover the truth about Louise Hayes.