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Matt Coyle

Biography

Matt Coyle

Matt Coyle is the bestselling author of the Rick Cahill PI Crime Series. He was named the 2021 San Diego Writer’s Festival Mystery Writer of the Year, and his novels have won the Anthony Award, the Shamus Award, the Lefty Award, and the San Diego Book Award, among others. He has also received nominations for numerous Anthony, Macavity, Barry, Shamus, and Lefty Awards. ODYSSEY'S END is 10th in this award-winning series. Matt is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara and lives in San Diego.

Matt Coyle

Books by Matt Coyle

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

San Diego private investigator Rick Cahill’s wife, Leah, has fled with their daughter, Krista, to her parents’ home in Santa Barbara. She fears Rick’s violent outbursts brought on by his potentially fatal brain disorder, CTE. Rick desperately wants to reunite his family and help provide for Krista’s future --- one he fears he won’t be alive to see. A jumpstart toward that future appears in the form of Peter Stone, Rick’s longtime enemy. Stone offers Rick $50,000 to find a woman he claims can save his life with a kidney transplant. Rick can’t pass up the chance to buttress Krista’s future. When what seems like a simple missing person case spirals out of control into cryptocurrency machinations, dead bodies and an outgunned faceoff, Rick is forced to battle evil from his past.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Private investigator Rick Cahill has been running from his past and chasing the truth his whole life. But his past is relentless --- and so is his CTE, a disease caused by repeated head traumas that has attacked his body and his mind. As Rick struggles to keep his family together, he does a favor for Sara Bhandari, a business contact. Then Sara is murdered, and the police believe her to be yet another victim of a serial rapist who has been terrorizing greater San Diego. But Rick has reason to question their theory. Determined to find the truth at any cost, and against his wife’s warnings, he investigates on his own. Along the way, he bumps up against a sinister private investigative agency and a shady shell corporation that may be hiding more than company secrets.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Rick Cahill's fiancée, Leah Landingham, is pregnant with their first child, and Rick is doing PI work that pays well and keeps him out of danger. Then a doctor gives him the bad news about the headaches he’s been suffering --- CTE, which leads to senility and early death --- a secret he keeps from Leah and his best friend, Moira MacFarlane. When Moira asks him to monitor her son, Luke --- who’s broken a restraining order to stay away from his girlfriend --- a simple surveillance explodes into greed, deceit and murder. Luke goes missing, and Rick’s dogged determination compels him to follow clues that lead to the exploration of high finance and DNA cancer research. Ultimately, Rick is forced to battle sadistic killers as he tries to find Luke and stay alive long enough to see the birth of his child.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Blinded by a gunshot wound to the face while working as a private investigator nine months ago, Rick Cahill is now sure of only one thing: he has to start a new life and leave his old one behind. He’s still trying to figure out what that life is when his onetime partner, Moira MacFarlane, asks for his help on a case she’s taken for his former best friend. The case is simple and Moira only needs him for one interview, but Rick is wary of waking sleeping demons. Ultimately, he goes against his gut and takes the case, which quickly turns deadly. Rick’s old compulsion of finding the truth no matter the cost --- the same compulsion that cost him his eyesight and almost his life --- battles against his desire to escape his past. The stakes are raised when his friend is implicated in murder and needs his help.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Krista Landingham, Rick Cahill's former partner on the Santa Barbara Police Department, is dead. When Rick goes to the funeral in the city where his wife was murdered and where he is seen as guilty for her death in the eyes of the police, he discovers that Krista’s death may not have been a tragic accident, but murder. Hired by Krista’s sister, Leah, to investigate, Rick follows clues that lead him to the truth --- not only about Krista’s death, but about the tragedy that ruined his life. Along the way, Leah shows him that his life can be salvaged and he can feel love again if he can just move beyond his past. The past is Rick’s present and will always be until he rights his one great wrong. In the end, Rick is left with a decision that forces him to confront the horrific actions he’ll need to take to exact revenge and achieve redemption.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

A demented soul is stalking Naomi Hendrix, waiting for the right moment to snatch her and fulfill a twisted fantasy. When Naomi’s radio station hires PI Rick Cahill to protect Naomi and track down the stalker, he discovers that Naomi is hiding secrets about her past that could help unmask the man. However, before Rick can extract the truth from Naomi, he is thrust into a missing person’s case --- an abduction he may have unwittingly caused. The investigating detective questions Rick’s motives for getting involved and pressures him to stop meddling. While Rick pursues Naomi’s stalker and battles the police, evil ricochets from his own past and embroils Rick in a race to find the truth about an old nemesis.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Hard-boiled Mystery, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

Rick Cahill has long feared the truth about his own blood --- the blood of his father coursing through his veins. When a long-hidden safe unlocks clues about why his father was kicked off the police force 27 years ago and then spiraled into an early drunken death, Rick determines to find the truth even if it proves the one thing he's always feared. But as he grapples with his father's past, the woman he still loves pleads with him to find out if her husband is having an affair --- or is involved in something much more sinister. Could the truth send her back into Rick’s arms? Would he have a last shot at happiness? He may never get the chance to find out, as killers who will do anything to protect their secrets lurk in the shadows.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

La Jolla Chief of Police Tony Moretti is convinced that Private Investigator Rick Cahill killed a missing person. With Moretti on his tail and the bank about to foreclose on his house, Rick takes a paying case that will stave off the bank, but pits him against Moretti and the La Jolla Police Department. Brianne Colton, a beautiful country singer, believes that her estranged husband’s suicide was really murder. Each new piece of evidence convinces Rick that she’s right. He breaks his number one rule and falls for Brianne, even as he begins to question her motives. As Moretti cinches the vise tighter, evil forces emerge from the shadows who will do anything to stop Rick from uncovering the truth.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Nightmares of the man he killed two years ago still chase Rick Cahill through his sleep, and the memory of his murdered wife haunts him during waking hours. When an old nemesis asks for his help to free a man from prison, a man he thinks is wrongly convicted of murder, Rick grabs at the chance to turn his life around. With the police on one side of the law and a vicious biker gang on the other, all trying to stop him from freeing this individual, Rick risks his life to uncover the truth that only the real killer knows --- what happened one bloody night eight years earlier.

by Matt Coyle - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

Rick Cahill was never convicted of his wife's murder, but he was never exonerated either. When he meets Melody Malana, a beautiful yet secretive TV reporter, he sees a chance to love again. When she is arrested for murder and asks Rick for help, the former cop says no, but the rest of him says yes and he grasps at a chance for redemption. However, Rick's attempt to help turns terribly wrong, and he becomes a suspect in the murder and the target of a police manhunt.