Michael Gerhrdt
Author Bio
I was born in Indiana, raised and educated in Indiana and Michigan, and now live on the East Coast in a renovated stone barn. I began my writing career writing advertising for television, moved into radio and then direct mail, and then began writing fiction. My first book was published in 2000, and since then I wrote written five others before starting the current ten book series of the adventures of Lori Nichols for Diamond Publishing. I have also written three stage plays and a movie script.
My writing awards include two Clio’s for television commercials, a Benjamin Franklin Award for a Direct Marketing Campaign, two Pulitzer Prize nominations in the Fiction category, Third Place in Fiction at the Paris International Book Festival, and Best Published Book of 2013 awarded by MENSA.
In addition to writing, I love to travel, play golf and hike. Extensive travel has given me not only an ability to paint an accurate background of a country in my stories, but has exposed me to how different people live and think. My partner and I hike every single day, rain, shine or snow and ice. I have found that being out in the fresh air is remarkably good for the creative process.
I write every day, and find it exciting and rewarding.
Description
The Lori Nichols Mystery Series follows the adventures of a black, female CIA agent as she and her hand-picked team travel the US and the World to fight international criminals.
In Ransom, the first book in the series, Ms. Nichols, fresh out of the CIA training program, joins a massive team of law enforcement personnel gathered to try to foil the plans of an international terrorist group. The NSA has uncovered plans to attack Washington DC on Christmas Eve. Nichols is first assigned as a glorified secretary, but soon uses her initiative and the unique skills of her team to go freelance to try to stop the planned carnage.
The team she assembles includes Art, a middle aged white man who has remarkable skills at designing mechanical and electrical tools for spying and self defense. Art’s nephew, Bruce, is a private investigator, and Buddy is a man who developed his skills surviving the streets of Watts. Together they make a formidable team, but they need all of their collective skills to battle the terrorists bent on attacking America’s capitol city.
As the clock winds down to Christmas Eve, Nichols and her team identify one of the terrorists. Using state of the art technology developed by Art, they track the man instead of arresting him, hoping to capture the entire cell. At the last minute, with the help of a mysterious caller, they are successful, and are celebrated by all.
But, before the confetti is swept up, the mysterious caller contacts Nichols again and tells her that there is another attack planned on New York City, scheduled for New Years Eve. With only a week to find the new cell and stop it, the scene shifts to New York. Nichols gets another call when she arrives in the city. This time the caller does not offer help. Instead, he tells her that he is behind the second threat, and shell never be able to figure it out in time.
He then tells her that the government’s only hope is to pay him one billion dollars, for which he will call off the attack.
The government refuses to pay, and Nichols and her team have to use every trick at their disposal to try to stop the disaster from happening.
Lori Nichols is a character created years ago by Roger Meyers in a book titled Spymistress. Mr. Meyers moved on to other creative endeavors, and only recently decided to return to the project and do a series of Lori Nichols mysteries. Roger asked me to join the project and write the series, using the characters he created in the initial book. Ransom is my first effort in this project.
Book excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
Jake Peters definitely had a hangover. He knew he shouldn’t have had those last two drinks. But, the Monday night NFL game went into overtime, and the drinks were free, so what could he do? He tried taking his sunglasses off when he reached his cubicle, but the glare from the overhead lights was too much to bear. He sat down at his desk, settled into his chair, and turned on his computer.
The NSA logo popped up on the screen and he logged on with his password. He sighed as the screen indicated there were five hundred and ten messages for him to review.
“Great.” He muttered to himself as he clicked on the first message. NSA listened to all phone messages, everywhere in the world, both land line and cell. Every single conversation was recorded and pumped into the huge NSA supercomputers. Each conversation was then analyzed, word by word, with the computers searching for keywords that might indicate a threat to the United States. If a conversation contained a “red flag” word, it was transferred to a review file. It was then the job of Peters and the other dozen or so readers sitting in the room around him to go through each of these flagged conversations and determine if there was, in fact, a potential threat to the United States being discussed.
Most of the conversations that contained key words were conducted in Arabic, so a written translation was appended to each conversation. It was the analyst’s job to listen to the tone of the voices and read the words and then make a determination. Tedious, boring, and not very exciting. But, it paid the bills. Barely.
Peters struggled through a half hour of harmless conversations, trying to keep the volume down and the glare from the screen at a minimum. He was just about to sign off for an early coffee break when he listened to what sounded like a stressed voice talking very fast. He checked the origin of the call. Washington DC. He checked the location for the respondent, Mogadishu, Somalia. He read the transcript.
“Holy shit!” He said out loud and sat up straight. He replayed the conversation and then reread the copy below, focusing on the key words as identified by the computer.
The infidels in Washington will soon pay for their actions.
He reached for his phone and fumbled with it, then stabbed at the #1 on his speed dial. The phone buzzed twice and was answered.
“Ford.” His supervisor, Juliana Ford answered.
“Hey. It’s Jake Peters.”
“I know that, Jake. It says so right here on my caller id.”
Peters hated talking with Ford. She always made him feel stupid.
“Right. Sorry.”
After a short pause, Ford spoke again.
“Is there a purpose for this call, Jake?”
“Yea. I found something. You want to come look at it here, or do you want me to e-mail it?”
“Why isn’t it already on my screen?”
“Right.” Peters said as he pushed a button, sending the message to Ford’s computer. He could hear her computer ping the reception of the email over the phone. He waited while Ford read the message.
“Shit.” Ford said into the phone.
“Exactly.” Replied Peters.
“I’ll take it from here.”
Peters waited and finally Ford rewarded him.
“OK. Good job, Peters.”
“Thank you.” He said, but Ford had already disconnected.
He stood up and stared over the wall of his cubicle out the window down at the end of the room. He had been doing this job for six months now, and this was the most obvious threat he had encountered. He tried to imagine the kind of people who would now spring into action to try to blunt the threat. An important job. Probably an exciting job. He shrugged.
“People braver than I am.” He said out loud and headed for the break room.
Author Website
https://www.facebook.com/michael.gerhardt.737