LAYTON GREEN
Author of
A Shattered Lens (Seventh Street Books, 2019)
Written in Blood (Seventh Street Press, 2017)
The Summoner (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
The Egyptian (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
The Diabolist (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
Layton writes across multiple genres, including mystery, thriller, suspense, fantasy, and horror. He is the author of the Genesis Trilogy, the Dominic Grey series, the Blackwood Saga, the Preach Everson novels, and other works of fiction. His novels have been optioned for film, nominated for numerous awards (including a rare three-time finalist for an International Thriller Writers award), translated into multiple languages, and have topped dozens of bestseller lists. His latest novel, The Shadow Cartel, was a #2 overall bestseller on Amazon UK.
In addition to writing, Layton attended law school in New Orleans and was a practicing attorney for the better part of a decade. He has also been an intern for the United Nations, an ESL teacher in Central America, a bartender in London, a seller of cheap knives on the streets of Brixton, a door to door phone book deliverer in Florida, and the list goes downhill from there.
Layton lives with his wife and children in North Carolina.
Books by Layton
A Shattered Lens: Book 2 (Seventh Street Books, 2019)
A detective investigates the murder of a teenage golden boy that has rocked a small town–and the chief suspect is the victim’s mother.
Annalise Stephens Blue is a Creekville high school student with plans to become a world-famous filmmaker. As she begins filming an exposé of the town called Night Lives, she uncovers more than she bargained for: on the very first night of filming, she stumbles upon a murder in the woods, and flees the scene steps ahead of the killer.
Detective Joe “Preach” Everson is called to investigate the murder. The victim, David Stratton, is the town’s golden boy and high school quarterback. A modern version of what Preach used to be. Not only that, the boy’s mother is Claire Lourdis, a beautiful divorcée who Preach fell for in high school. She is also the main suspect in her son’s murder.
Despite the cloud of suspicion hanging over her, old feelings resurface between Claire and Preach, straining the detective’s relationship with his girlfriend Ari, a prosecutor in nearby Durham. As Preach delves into the secrets lurking beneath the surface of the town and searches for a missing girl who may have witnessed the crime, he must put his own feelings aside and pursue the answer to a terrible question: is a mother capable of murdering her own child?
Written in Blood: Book 1 (Seventh Street Press, 2017)
After a decade of tracking down killer in Atlanta, Detective Joe “Preach” Everson, a prison chaplain turned police officer, returns to his hometown of Creekville, North Carolina to soothe his battered spirit and join the local police force. A bohemian community just outside of Chapel Hill, where hipsters rub shoulders with good ol’ boys, the eccentric little town is known to the rest of the state as the People’s Republic of Creekville.
Soon after Preach arrives, a local bookstore owner is brutally killed in his home – the first murder in Creekville in over seven years. The only officer on the force with homicide experience, Preach is assigned to the case and makes a shocking discovery: the bookstore owner has been murdered in exactly the same manner as the pawnbroker in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Preach must work the murder case at the same time he tries to deal with the violence that has touched his own life.
With the help of his partner Kirby and Ariana Hale, a law student and bibliophile who knew the victim, Preach investigates the local writer’s community and the bizarre underbelly of Creekville. There have been changes in the detective’s old stomping grounds — and not for the better. Darkness and violence have found their way into the small southern town, taking root and spreading like kudzu through the forest. The danger and tension in the small town mounts, and when a second body is found, this time eerily resembling the crime scene in a famous Edgar Allen Poe novella, Preach realizes that his adversary is a literate killer with a mind as devious as it is disturbed.
The novel is a page turner with compelling characters, including the quirky town of Creekville, which emerges as a fascinating character unto itself. Layton is brilliant at building suspense throughout the book right up to its unexpected denouement.
Praise
“Written in Blood provides the delights of a whodunit, with esoteric clues that refer cleverly to classic literary works, while, at the same time, offering the gritty sense of place and the kind of psychologically complex characters ordinarily associated with noir. These elements combine to make a smart page-turner, as dark and deep as the Carolina woods.”
—Gordon McAlpine, author of Hammett Unwritten and the Edgar-nominated Woman with a Blue Pencil
”Written in Blood combines bookishness and murder in brain-teasing ways, doubling the pleasure of a more conventional procedural. Fast paced and braided with twists, it’s terrific entertainment.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of The Only Child and The Demonologist
”Written in Blood has it all. The lead detectives are fully drawn and full of mystery, each battling his own demons while fighting for justice. And Layton Green nails the Southern setting, where the town of Creekville seems like a hipster’s paradise and yet bubbles with menace and long-held resentments below the kale-smoothie surface. On top of all that, Written in Blood has an ending that no one, and I mean no one, will see coming. A compelling and elegant work of crime fiction.”
—Mark Pryor, author of Dominic and the Hugo Marston novels
”A fast-paced, well-written mystery that skillfully combines a police procedural with literary sleuthing. Simply put, this novel is too good to pass up. If you haven’t read anything by Layton Green, start now. You won’t be disappointed.”
—Larry D. Sweazy, multiple-award-winning author of Where I Can See You
”A page-turner for readers who appreciate literary references and existential questions with their corpses.”
—Publishers Weekly
”Smart, tense, and mystifying, this is one of the best new mysteries I’ve read this year.”
—Critical Mass Blogspot
”[A] fascinating new protagonist who's both tough and sensitive.”
—Kirkus Reviews
The Summoner (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
When a United States diplomat disappears in front of hundreds of onlookers while attending a religious ceremony in Zimbabwe, Diplomatic Security special agent Dominic Grey, product of a violent childhood and a worn passport, is assigned to investigate.
Aiding the investigation is Professor of Religious Phenomenology Viktor Radek, as well as Nya Mashumba, the local government liaison.
What Grey uncovers is a terrifying cult older than Western civilization, the harsh underbelly of a country in despair, a priest seemingly able to perform impossibilities, and the identity of the newest target.
Himself…
Praise
“Mystical, complicated, completely believable and terrifying...[w]ith and ending that will catapult you out of your reading chair. Riveting.”
—The Review Broads
The Egyptian (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
At a mausoleum in Cairo’s most notorious cemetery, a mercenary receives a package containing a silver test tube suspended in hydraulic stasis.
An investigative reporter tracking rogue biomedical companies is terrified by the appearance of a mummified man outside her Manhattan apartment.
A Bulgarian scientist who dabbles in the occult makes a startling discovery in his underground laboratory.
These seemingly separate events collide when Dominic Grey and Viktor Radek, private investigators of cults, are hired by the CEO of an Egyptian biomedical firm to locate stolen research integral to the company’s new life extension product. However, after witnessing the slaughter of a team of scientists by the remnants of a dangerous cult thought long abandoned, Grey and Viktor turn from pursuers to pursued.
From the gleaming corridors of visionary laboratories to the cobblestone alleys of Eastern Europe to a lost oasis in the Sahara, Grey and Viktor must sift through science and myth to uncover the truth behind the Egyptian and his sinister biotech—before that truth kills them.
Praise
“[If] James Bond and the X-Files had a love child, this book would be it.”
—Keryl Raist, To Publish or Not to Publish
”The Egyptian combines mythology and modern scientific research in a fantastic thriller that leaves the reader breathless and on the edge of their seat...reminds me of Michael Chrichton's works with the mysteries, thrills, and the life-changing scientific discoveries.”
—Cherie Reich, Surrounded by Books
The Diabolist (Thomas & Mercer, 2013)
Globe-hopping detectives Dominic Grey and Professor Viktor Radek have a distinct specialty: they investigate matters that involve mysterious or unexplained phenomena. Crimes that other agencies can’t or won’t touch.
When a controversial religious leader is immolated in the Mission District of San Francisco, the local police chalk it up to a bizarre suicide. Yet witnesses claim a mysterious robed figure set fire to the priest. When a cult leader in Paris dies under similar circumstances, Interpol asks Grey and Viktor for help.
Convinced the culprit is a charismatic New Age prophet who has become an Internet sensation, Grey and Viktor undergo a perilous journey into the world of the occult as they try to penetrate the prophet’s inner circle. Along the way, they realize the prophet has ties to Viktor’s past, and that a far more sinister plan is afoot—a plan that, if successful, will shake the world to its core.
From the catacombs of Paris to London’s nefarious East End, from the haunted walls of York to a lost fortress in the Sicilian wilderness, Viktor and Grey’s latest case plunges them into a vortex of modern-day black magic, ancient heresies, and the most dangerous place of all: the cobwebbed corners of their own pasts.
Praise
“Unbelievably good, unbelievably intricate, unbelievably Green.” —The Review Broads
”A well-crafted and exciting thriller with a pair of interesting protagonists...and a charismatic villain who makes our head crawl.” —Booklist