Authorpreneur Dashboard – Ron McManus

Ron  McManus

The Drone Enigma

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Jake Palmer accepts an offer from a defense contractor to consult with the company on the death of an engineer assigned to the top-secret Perseus Project—the development of the navigation and targeting systems for an experimental Navy drone. Two days into the case, Palmer finds the defense contractor shot dead. What he discovers convinces him that both deaths are related to the project and that someone within the company is working with terrorists to seize control of the drone during a planned live-fire test in Afghanistan. With no hard evidence to support his theory, he is unable to persuade either the company or the Navy that an imminent threat exists. Concerned that he will disrupt the test, the company terminates Palmer’s contract and notifies the police. Pursued by the police and headed for engagement with a large, well-armed terrorist cell led by the company insider, Palmer is close to defeat when he receives help from the most unlikely person. With only hours to spare, they race to stop an attack half a world away.

Book Bubbles from The Drone Enigma

Chase on the Chesapeake

In this chase scene on the Chesapeake Bay, Palmer is with Alona Green. This is Green's first appearance in my 4-book Jake Palmer standalone series. She returns in The Chameleon. In writing this book, I took my own boat into the inlet with my wife and inadvertently turned toward the base instead of the public marina on the other side and was met with the Navy security boat. My wife was not happy seeing the boat coming toward us with a machine gun mounted on the bow and lights flashing. She has retold this story many times. This book is based in the Virginia Beach/Hampton Roads area where I live and home to several Navy, Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard bases.

Friend or Enemy

This is an important meeting between Jake Palmer and Alona Green. Did she kill his friend or not? All the evidence says she did. If she did, what was her motive? And why had she knocked on the door of his hotel room?

The Envelope

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Jake Palmer is attending a wedding in New York, and Fiona Collins has flown in from London to accompany him to the event. The night before the wedding a U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent meets Palmer in the hotel bar and requests his help. He leaves Palmer a sealed envelope and tells him to review the contents, saying he will be in touch in a few days. Moments later, the agent is gunned down. Palmer decides to return the envelope to HSI but not until after he and Collins open it. Inside they find a cryptic note from the agent and information related to a counterfeit medicine case involving a drug manufactured by the company where Collins works. The next morning, they take the envelope to HSI’s New York office, ending Palmer’s involvement in the investigation, or so he thinks. Collins returns to London intent on finding more about the counterfeiting of one of their newest medicines. After an unexpected event changes Palmer’s perspective, he teams with the HSI special agent now in charge of the case. Together they pursue those behind a global counterfeit medicine and money-laundering operation. As the investigation unfolds, Palmer makes a startling discovery that raises his personal stake in the outcome and reveals the real reason the murdered HSI agent wanted him involved. With those closest to him now in danger and more patients dying from taking a medication that contains almost none of the life-saving ingredient, time is running out.

Book Bubbles from The Envelope

Libido's Twist

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Former U.S. Navy SEAL, Jake Palmer, is searching for something to fill the void in his life, a void present since he left the Navy ten years earlier. Neither his previous work as a corporate attorney nor his string of short-term personal relationships filled the indefinable emptiness. When a former colleague at B&A Pharmaceuticals asks Palmer to investigate the deaths of a physician researcher and his nurse in a car crash in southwest England, he is reluctant but accepts the assignment. Palmer is teamed with Fiona Collins, a tenacious B&A research auditor. Collins believes Palmer’s role is to observe and assist her in auditing the deceased physician’s clinical research records, assistance she neither needs nor wants. While Palmer believes the sooner Collins completes her audit, the sooner he can commence his investigation into the deaths. They travel to a small town on the Cornish coast and follow a trail of evidence that leads them to London, where they become entangled in a web of deceit, ambition and murder. With their lives in imminent danger, Palmer must confront his demons and bring those responsible to justice, even if it means killing them.

Book Bubbles from Libido's Twist

The Chameleon

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Jake Palmer has signed on as a contractor with a top-secret US Joint Special Operations Command team in Islamabad, Pakistan. Palmer and his JSOC partner work to uncover a suspected mole and gather intelligence regarding the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon arsenal as the country prepares for war with India. Fears regarding security of the weapons escalate when Pakistan decides to deploy its arsenal and rumors surface that a shadowy figure, the Chameleon, will attempt to divert a nuclear warhead during the deployment. With a nuclear war countdown clock at a minute ‘til midnight, Palmer and his partner risk everything to prevent the Chameleon from carrying out a plan for the world’s first act of nuclear terrorism.

Book Bubbles from The Chameleon

Aaliyah's Asset Quits

Aaliyah is a female Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officer. When she meets with her compromised American asset, he tells her that he's had enough and is going to quit. She reminds him that she has the upper hand. Aaliyah's is a rarity, a female ISI officer. She is a powerful and beautiful woman, a sympathetic antagonist who you will love to hate.

In Too Deep to Quit

A Pakistani intelligence officer, who goes only by Aaliyah is meeting with an American intelligence officer she had recruited as a spy by entering into a romantic relationship and using that connection to compromise him and get sensitive American intelligence, He has shown her information about two Americans who will be joining him in Islamabad and who are part of a secret, special-operations group. He tells her that he has had enough and wants out. The Chameleion is the 4th in the Jake Palmer series and has won multiple national and international awards.

Trouble is Brewing

Palmer and Green, members of a Joint Special Operation Group, called Task Force Orange, go to an Islamabad café to have coffee with a man who is being recruited as foreign agent by their co-worker, an intelligence case officer named Singleton. When the man is late, Palmer senses a problem.

Is a nuclear terrorist attack possible?

The Chameleon has won 2021 Best Indie Book Award, the 2021 Chanticleer International Book Awards' Global Thriller Grand Prize Award, the National Indie Excellence Award, the 2022 Readers' Favorite Award, and the 2022 Military Writers Association of America's Siver Medal Award. Readers have said that the The Chameleon frightened them because it convinced them that nuclear terrorism could actually occur. In this, the fourth the standalone Jake Palmer series, I've continued to develop the main characters of Jake Palmer, Alona Green, and Fiona Collins and introduced engaging new ones, as well.

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