Jonathon King

Book six of the bestselling Max Freeman mystery series: Max investigates a conspiracy involving corrupt cops, fraud, and a drug kingpin from his past as he fights to save what he loves most

Max is back, trawling the trailer parks and waterways of South Florida, where amid the gorgeous beaches and abundant foliage there lies a stunning range of brutality.

After Max is hired to investigate a conspiracy involving fake claims to Medicare, he quickly realizes the scheme is much more dangerous than anyone assumed. And when the Brown Man, a former drug kingpin who once helped Max nab a serial killer, reappears in a slick new guise, Max must reclaim his street instincts to protect not just the citizens of South Florida, but also his girlfriend, Detective Sherry Richards—the one person he can’t afford to lose

This ebook features rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author's life.

The ideas behind Midnight Guardians come, as those in all of my books, from real life. I have been in every locale described in the novel from the broken down trailer parks to the opulent penthouses to the stunningly beautiful Everglades where Max lives.

As a crime reporter for nearly 25 years, I have hundreds of actual events and stories swirling around in my head and I often simply pluck one out and cannibalize it for my fiction. In Midnight Guardians you are first introduced to a character that is brutally pinched in a cop car vs. motorist accident. That really happened during my watch on South Florida’s Interstate 595 to a patrolman who as a result lost his legs. When Max ties him to a crew of weightlifting, steroid popping cops, that too was a real scandal that occurred on my beat in the 1990s. In more recent years, South Florida became the “pill mill” capital of the U.S. where thousands of prescription drugs are being handed out daily at storefront pain clinics and the Miami area has for decades been the focus of regular Medicare frauds involving phony wheelchair and medical supply purchases. When I read a report last year that quoted FBI investigators saying that former South Florida drug runners and gangs were finding new life in the Medicare and pill business, I couldn’t resist. I simply mixed those scenarios in with my tilting at windmills fictional characters in Max, Billy Manchester the stuttering attorney, and Det. Shcrry Richards and Presto! A mystery with a true heart was born.