RIVER RAGE REVENGE, my new thriller novel, is one of those kinds of novels that is difficult to place in a specific genre because it contains elements of more than one genre. I prefer to think of the tale as a terrific romance story with elements of not just passionate romance, but also an adventure. There is a mix of love, hate, jealousy, deceit, ambition, cheating, finance, and finally, the mysterious murder of a young woman whose body is discovered in a shallow grave next to a river.

A short synopsis of the story: Two young people who dated once during college discover each other once again later when they are both working toward their career goals, Jennifer Corrington as an attorney and Paul Mercer as a young and ambitious politician. However, they both live far apart, making the growth of their love affair difficult. Eventually, they find a way to work out the distance problem and find a way to culminate their love and become married. Paul is now in the U.S. Congress in Washington and Jennifer is working in Chicago. Even though they are still far from each other, Jennifer hatches a plan to leave her position in Chicago and move to a new legal position in Washington to be near her husband.

Fate steps in.when Paul's best friend, Jerry Webster, is killed in an auto accident out West, leaving his financial business and all his personal wealth to Paul and his office manager, Shelley Davis. Paul has to make a career decision to either stay in D.C. or go back to his hometown and learn the finance business his friend left him and Shelley. Encouraged by his wife Jennifer, the couple decides to leave Washington and move back to their hometown of Decatur. Paul joins the business with Shelley and Jennifer opens a private law firm. In order to help get the struggling business off to a decent start, Paul and Shelley hire an experienced woman in finance to help the business. Her name is Gloria Sharpley. Then they discover unsavory background information on the woman and are forced to fire her.

For a short time, all seems well, but then all hell breaks loose when the body of the missing woman is discovered in a shallow grave on the edge of the Sangamon River near Decatur. Mysterious envelopes are received at Jennifer's office, leading her to believe her husband Paul may have known the dead woman while he was in Washington. Trust issues develop which eventually causes Paul to divorce Jennifer.

Detectives Harold Hanson and Joshua Dean are in charge of the investigation into the murder of the woman. As the investigation unfolds, several people are included as potential suspects in the case, including Ted Knowles, an ex-husband of the dead woman, Paul Mercer, and even his ex-wife Jennifer.  

After a series of events plus an anonymous call to one of the detectives, the plot thickens considerably until a totally surprising event leads them onto the right path to solve the murder. The reader will experience a story ending they could never predict.

This story is available at:  https://www.amazon.com/s?k=paul+r.+meredith&ref=nb_sb_noss

The Vigilante Series

The Vigilante Series

by

Paul R. Meredith

My Vigilante series of crime novels consists of four stories. While each is a standalone story on its own merit, it is more gratifying if they are read in the sequence in which they were written. Here is the proper sequence:

The Vigilante God

The Rise of the Vigilante Goddess

The Return of the Vigilante Goddess

The Copycat Vigilantes

The series begins: The accidental hunting death of his eight-year-old son caused attorney Paul Dixon to go off on a wild tangent, costing him his marriage, his law career, and much, much more. He quit his position at the law firm where he was employed and left town after his divorce was final. He went into seclusion, changed his identity to Sam Little, and carefully conceived a plan to seek out the family members of those victims whose loved ones had suffered violence at the hands of the criminals in our society, criminals who had not received the full benefit of the justice system due to technicalities, loopholes in the law, crooked police, crooked judges, or slick-talking lawyers. Dixon's plans would be financed by those family members who felt they were cheated of justice by the criminal justice system, and the custom plans would be carried out by Sam Little's few very carefully selected hand-chosen associates.


Each of the stories will feed into the next one until the conclusion of the series with The Copycat Vigilantes.


The stories are all available at:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Paul+R.+Meredith&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss

My Favorite Stories

My Favorite Books

These books are listed in the order of my personal preference. They are my choices as favorite books I have written over the years. I also include the reasons for my choices. Often the stories are based on real events rather than just made-up stories.

All of these stories, as well as my other twenty stories, are available on 

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Paul+R.+Meredith&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss


Some of them are available as softcover editions while most are in e-book format.


Kenyan Sunset – this story surprised me as it developed in my mind. I honestly never knew I had the creative ability to cover such a huge set of sub-plots in order to get to the main theme of the story. I had great admiration for my ability to write such a commanding and consuming story.


The Virginia Yankee – This story was actually my 26^th novel, but it jumped up near the top of my list of favorites because it was inspired by my love of all things concerning the great American Civil War. While there is ample Civil War detail in the story, there is another story, a story that I believe is one of the best romantic sequences I have ever written.


Olive’s Angels – this story was inspired by my mother’s Christian faith and her love for angels. One of my sisters opened a store specializing in angels and angel paraphernalia in honor of Mom. As the idea to write this story developed, I sought stories from real people who had angel encounters. I dove into the bible to learn all I could about angels. 


His Soul Mate – This was my very first novel I was able to get in print. It was inspired by my oldest daughter’s battle with breast cancer. The story is essentially a touchingly tender love story with a real-life ending. 


An Iowa Blessing – I loved writing this story because it was based loosely on a love affair between two people I vaguely knew. I took some liberties with the story to ensure it had a better ending than the real story, but it nevertheless captures the essence of what I wanted to say. I lived in Iowa for several years and some of my children and grandchildren still call Iowa home.


The Love Wish – I had to include this story as one of my most favorites because it tells such a tender story of second love. This love story again is loosely based on a real event that I was close to, an event that held great happiness for two people for several years…until real life kicked in and ended as many stories do. I lived in Iowa and Illinois, the Midwest settings for this story. Even though this story doesn’t end all gushy, I hope the reader will pick it up and be enthralled as most people who read it have been. It is totally consuming as it unfolds. 

It is my hope you will download or order one or more of my twenty-six stories and enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them.

The Death of a Soul Mate

People grow old, they sometimes get sick and die. It is the great plan of our Creator that dying is what will happen to all living things including human beings. We all know the Creator’s plan and learn to accept it over time, especially as we get along in years and see the breakdown of the body take its toll on us.


The worst part of the aging process to people who have been happily married for many years is losing the loved one who has been with them through thick and thin. For me, getting old and seeing my body lose some of its youthful abilities was perfectly acceptable. What was not so acceptable was seeing my wife suffer the ravages of age, becoming incapacitated and eventually become ill and die of an unexpected brain tumor.


I will never forget returning to my home that first night after she died, knowing as I put my head on my pillow that first night, my wife and soul mate would never again share my bed with me. During the seventy-two days she was lying ill in the hospital and then later at the nursing home, even when she was under terminal hospice care, I held out hope some miracle would allow her to return home to me. But when she eventually drew her last breath and her body was removed to a funeral home for final plans to be made, I knew at that moment all hope was gone. It dawned on me that very night my beautiful wife would never be with me again. Decent nights of sleep never came to me...not for months.


I lost a young wife to death when I was younger. We had been married for just nine years. We had three beautiful children together. Her death was absolutely staggering to me. Then years later I lost a beautiful and very talented older daughter to breast cancer. Her death nearly brought me to my knees once again. But I was somehow able to eventually come to grips with these two devastating personal losses. I think it may have been because I was younger and I knew I had to handle my responsibilities. In the case of losing my young wife, I had the raising of our three young daughters to carry me through, and then later when my daughter passed, I was buoyed by the fact I had a loving but ill wife who desperately needed me.


When my loving wife passed away when I was eighty-one years old, I knew in my heart there would never be another love in my life like her. Yes, of course, I deeply loved my surviving children, but they were all living far away and most of them have spouses, significant others or grown children watching after them. My role as a caretaker was over. I realized I was just counting the days until my time here on earth was coming to an end.  It doesn’t mean that I was feeling sorry for myself. As I told one of my visiting daughters recently, my job here is essentially over. When something happens to me now, I will have no great regret. I lived my life the only way I knew how and I think I did a pretty good job with the responsibilities I was given. When my time does finally come, I will be ready. I no longer have life goals ahead of me to achieve.