DAVID RICH BOOKS
In 1852 Richard Francis Burton, the legendary explorer and author, fell in love with a Persian woman while in the British Army. When her parents discovered the affair, they poisoned her. Devastated and vulnerable, Burton camped out in an opium den. But the British spymaster, Hodgson, needed Burton and his unique talents for a mission: pose as a Muslim on the Hajj, and when it’s over, steal a woman from a harem in Medina. Burton knew myriad languages. He could duel and shoot and ride. And most of all he needed Hodgson because Burton had an unquenchable thirst for risk-taking.
Hallucinatory twists followed and Burton’s life turned into a tale of adventure and romance worthy of the Arabian Nights. “The Mirrored Palace” is a spy story – romantic and swashbuckling, harrowing and tragic – based on Burton's life, and utilizing his own published account of his Hajj. At the same time, it is a literary adventure, a narrative puzzle cleverly shuffled by Hodgson, haunted by his betrayal of Burton. Whose version, Burton's or Hodgson's, is closer to the truth?
"A spy story and a labyrinth literary mystery, this novel about the famed explorer and author Richard Francis Burton has it all: betrayal, ambition, regret and love. Read it for the adventure, or read it just to get your heart ripped out. It's great."
Lucian K. Truscott IV, NYT bestselling author of "Dress Gray."
Like his con artist father, Rollie Waters knows all the angles, and he’s never fewer than two steps ahead of trouble. But unlike his father, Rollie is not a criminal. Only when he’s working undercover for the Marines, inhabiting a false identity, is Rollie comfortable in his own skin.
But after he’s yanked out of his latest assignment and tossed into the brig, he’s not that surprised to hear that a lot of government money has gone missing and the officials think Rollie’s father took it. The only way to find Dan Waters is to trace the frail tendrils of truth scattered among Rollie’s childhood memories. To do that, he’ll have to go deep into the undercover identity of a lifetime—his own.
Recruited into SHADE, an elite, covert group formed by the U.S. military, Rollie Waters must locate and retrieve the countless millions taken from Saddam’s cache during the Iraq War and shipped home in the coffins of dead soldiers. But a sniper attack forces Rollie undercover to solve the riddle of the graves and to apprehend the puppet master behind the plot.
It’s a quest that reaches from the Texas digs of the self-proclaimed King of Kurdistan to the treacherous, labyrinthine streets of Erbil, Iraq, and into the arms of an enigmatic woman with impenetrable motives. Now more spy than soldier, Waters must uncover the man pulling the strings behind a backdrop of murder, deceit, and stolen fortune....
Events
Meeting Marlon
Join us for a staged reading of the new play Meeting Marlon by David Rich.
March 25th, 2025
6:00 PM
Founders Hall, 193 Danbury Rd,
Ridgefield, CT, 06877
Make a Murder | Thriller Author Panel
Join our panel of mystery writers as they discuss their writing process, from generating ideas to plotting twists and developing characters.
April 9th, 2025
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Harry Bennett Branch Auditorium
Short Story by David Rich
A Student Deferment
"There's a tear in your umbrella. Not much good with a tear is it?"
Enright straightened his umbrella so the short woman would no longer be able to see the tear.
"I put it there on purpose," he said. "So I know if it's still raining."
She smiled at him. "And I suppose you put a hole in your shoe to check for a puddle." The light turned green, and he hurried across to Victoria Station. Water leaked onto his shoulder. Enright had not bothered to consult the forecast, but a rough crossing suited him. The spectre of passengers recently wretched might make the customs officials sympathetic. Enright considered himself expert at pretending he had been sick. Like an actor summoning tears, to give the appearance of misery he pictured scenes from his four years in the Royal Navy, much of it spent shivering in the North Sea.
I should have started my spying then, he thought. I would have some security by now. He chuckled at that thought. A bald man with a mustache looked at him with disdain. Enright closed his umbrella, tossed it into the bin, and entered the station.
About David Rich
David spent the early years of his writing career in Hollywood. He wrote the feature film, Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips, as well as episodes of MacGyver, StarGate-SG1 and other shows. Along the way, he wrote scripts about carnivorous roaches, an urban Tarzan, an obsessive snake handler, an artist tormented by visions, cowboys, spies, cops, private eyes, soldiers, psychics, con artists, politicians and lawyers. But no writers, never writers.
