RICHARD ZAPPA
CRIME | THRILLER | MYSTERY AUTHOR
Meet the Author
Richard Zappa is a trial lawyer who retired in 2018 to write novels full-time. He is the author of the Jo Crowder Crime Thrillers. He was a Grand Prize Finalist for the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Award and his novel, The Lion Hunt, was awarded Honorable Mention for the Grand Prize. A black belt martial-artist and self-taught pianist, he writes from his homes in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware and St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands.
The fentanyl crisis just got a lot worse. Drug lord Diego “El Leon” Garcia, head of the infamous Chiapas Cartel, has begun trafficking “white gold,” a new fentanyl-laced pill that has quadrupled overdose deaths in Nevada and California. DEA special agent Antonio Vega has a plan to capture Garcia and shut down his criminal enterprise before his designer drug goes nationwide and kills hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Elena Sanchez, Garcia’s wife, incarcerated for drug trafficking and the attempted murder of a cop, escapes from a Louisiana prison and begins a perilous journey through Mexico to her husband, who is hiding away in his heavily guarded secret mountain estate. Former New Orleans homicide detective Jo Crowder agrees to help Sanchez evade the Mexican authorities, rival cartels, and street gangs, who pursue the wife of El Leon with evil intentions every step of the way.
The Lion Hunt is a story about a culture of violence, crime, and corruption, and two women, opposites in so many ways, who are drawn together with a common purpose—survival.
ISBN PAPERBACK: 978-1-922329-63-9
PUBLICATION DATE: MAY 17, 2024
AMAZON KINDLE
BARNES & NOBLE
BOOKTOPIA:
Heartland Insurance, the brainchild of multimillionaire Jared Finch, has a simple business model—buy people’s life insurance policies and collect the proceeds when they die. New Orleans homicide detective Jo Crowder and FBI Special Agent Alex Hill suspect there is a sinister relationship between Finch’s company and a research laboratory that is testing an experimental serum on animals. Hill and Crowder team up to investigate why so many people connected to Finch and his company are dying. But are they willing to break the law and risk their lives to uncover the horrifying truth?
A serial killer chooses Easter week to leave dead pregnant teens in front of Catholic churches in New Orleans. Homicide detective Jo Crowder doggedly pursues a trail of evidence that leads to the arrest of Miguel Diaz. However, Crowder’s instincts tell her that the evidence against Diaz was planted by the actual murderer. She suspects Monsignor Rossi, but can she prove that the clergyman is a cold-blooded murderer in time to save Diaz?
Publication date: May 4th 2021.
Paperback & Hardback Available
Separated at birth, identical twins Ann and Veronica couldn’t be more different: Ann, a loving wife and mother; Veronica, a heartless sociopath. When Veronica learns that Ann has married into a wealthy family, she manipulates family members and the police into believing she’s Ann and then stages Ann’s suicide, making off with millions to Europe and a new life as a wealthy socialite.
Identical Misfortune chronicles the thoughts and actions of a cold-blooded killer as she schemes, lies, and murders her way in and out of families on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s also the story of her pursuer, a New Orleans homicide detective, whose investigation uncovers one shocking revelation after another and whose only chance of stopping the killing is to turn her back on the law she’s sworn to uphold.
Paperback & Hardback Available
BOOKTOPIA: Paperback Hardback