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Gerry Boyle is an American author of mystery, suspense and crime fiction books.

He is known for writing the Jack McMorrow mystery series, which revolves around the life of former New York Times reporter Jack McMorrow and his girlfriend Roxanne Masterson, as well as the mystery series featuring rookie Portland crimebuster Brandon Blake.

An acclaimed crime novelist based in Maine, Boyle boasts a background as a former newspaper reporter and columnist, and is the editor of the alumni magazine of Colby College, where he studied.

The author currently lives with his beloved wife Mary in a tiny village located on a serene lake in central Maine.

He welcomes invitations for speaking engagements at libraries and book clubs, and is also open to making general appearances.

More about Gerry Boyle

Genres: Crime Suspense, Mystery, Thriller

United States

Brandon Blake Mysteries

  1. Port City Shakedown (2009)
  2. Port City Black and White (2011)
  3. Port City Crossfire (2019)
  4. Port City Rat Trap (2024)

Jack McMorrow

  1. Deadline (1993)
  2. Bloodline (1995)
  3. Lifeline (1996)
  4. Potshot (1997)
  5. Borderline (1998)
  6. Cover Story (2000)
  7. Pretty Dead (2003)
  8. Home Body (2004)
  9. Damaged Goods (2010)
  10. Once Burned (2015)
  11. Straw Man (2016)
  12. Random Act (2019)
  13. Robbed Blind (2022)

Detailed book overview

Brandon Blake Mysteries

Port City Shakedown

Brandon Blake is a loner who lives on his old wooden cruiser. Raised by his alcoholic grandmother after his mother was lost at sea, Blake learned to depend on himself. During an assignment for a law-enforcement class, Blake gets involved in a fight and is marked for payback by a soon-to-be-released convict. Meanwhile, questions surface about his mother's disappearance.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-1608933549
Publisher: Down East Books
Port City Black and White

Brandon Blake, the tough and resourceful kid from the Portland waterfront, has made it. He's been hired by the Portland Police Department, partly as payback for stopping a vicious cop killer in PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN. But the newest rookie on the night shift isn't pulling any punches. And when a drug-addled mom can't find her baby, Blake—whose mother left him and was killed when he was a toddler—comes down on her hard. Except the baby really is gone. 

Meanwhile, Blake's girlfriend, aspiring writer Mia, sees Brandon drifting into the world of cops and crime and leaving her behind. Brandon's relentless search for the child brings a load of trouble down on him, threatens his career, his life, his relationship. Will he end up alone on his old cabin cruiser Bay Witch? Or worse?

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2011
Ebook: B005LVNEKG
Publisher: Down East Books
Port City Crossfire

--Present Day, Portland, Maine--

Decried as a murderer and trigger-happy cop, rookie Officer Brandon Blake is beset by doubt and guilt over shooting and killing a sixteen-year-old armed with a pellet gun and a GoPro camera. Suspended, he distracts himself with a side-investigation of a troubled young couple.

Danni kept a diary in high-school, detailing her crushes, love affairs, pregnancy, and a single event that has haunted her to this day. With the diary lost, she's resigned to her secret. But her world is up-ended when Blake finds the diary and attempts to return it only to be stopped short by Dani's jealousy-prone boyfriend, Clutch. Dani pursues Blake to retrieve her diary containing a secret that could demand her life.

Dogged by a woman with a jealous boyfriend and a strange secret, hunted by the press and angry, grieving parents with a secret of their own, Brandon Blake must solve both mysteries before he loses more than just his job.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-1644570555
Publisher: ePublishing Works!
Port City Rat Trap

--Present Day, Portland, Maine--

Having just returned to duty following the fatal shooting of a teen, Officer Brandon Blake is eager to settle into "normal" when a local bank teller is found dead, floating near his live-aboard cabin cruiser in Portland Harbor.

The death ruled accidental, Blake, who has been warned about pushing beyond his jurisdiction, wonders how the young woman could have accidentally fallen over a five-foot fence.

Blake's ensuing investigation puts him at loggerheads with his own department as well as the New York City Mob. But as he continues to dig into the case, he may be digging his own grave.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2024
Ebook: B07SQNQJCC
Publisher: ePublishing Works!

Jack McMorrow

Deadline

Meet Jack McMorrow, a hard-hitting crime reporter for the New York Times, now living in the backwoods of Maine, near the paper plant in Rumford. Jack's there to run the local paper, but when a unpopular photographer is found drowned in a nearby canal, Jack gets drawn into a complicated game that has kept members of the town silenced and in fear for their lives.

Maine may be the place where life is as it should be, but McMorrow finds out staying alive may be harder than he thought.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 1993
ISBN: 978-1939017062
Publisher: Islandport Press
Bloodline

Missy Hewett was a success story in the small town of Prosperity, Maine. She was smart, pleasant—and pregnant in high school. Giving the child up for adoption was the answer, but then Missy decided she wanted her baby back. Both she and reporter Jack McMorrow, writing a story on teen parents, find it’s not that simple. And in Missy’s case, hunting a baby is a risky business.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 1995
ISBN: 978-1939017451
Publisher: Islandport Press
Lifeline

The tendency toward mayhem that goes along with life with Jack McMorrow sends his girlfriend Roxanne to the relatively stable urban center of Portland, leaving Jack with a sore heart and an ultimatum in the wilds of Maine. In an effort to clean up his act, Jack takes a job as a courthouse reporter for the Kennebec Observer. 

What seems like the safe choice turns out to be anything but when Jack is drawn into a domestic abuse case that leaves a woman dead and McMorrow tangled in a messy web of innuendo, conflicted emotions, and mortal danger. It’s time for Jack to grow up, but can he do it? Is it his destiny to follow his subjects into a life of rancor and violence, or will he be able to escape the call of his darker side and find some measure of peace? Only the future knows.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 1996
ISBN: 978-1939017529
Publisher: Islandport Press
Potshot

Predicting the days of marijuana legalization, this, the fourth McMorrow story, delves deep into backwoods growing and drug dealing, and the damage it can do when big, urban traffickers enter the picture. Jack alternates between the back-to-landers living communally on the outskirts of Florence, Maine, and confrontations with urban gangsters moving in on the product―and the people who Jack’s come to know.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 1997
ISBN: 978-1939017543
Publisher: Islandport Press
Borderline

On a travel story about Benedict Arnold, freelance reporter Jack McMorrow traces the route of the infamous historical figure up the Kennebec River into Quebec, Canada. When a man fails to rejoin his bus tour in the Northern Maine town of Scanesett, Jack makes a pit stop there to help authorities find him and soon finds himself entangled with a bunch of lethal small-town hoods who make bad sport of the weak and defenseless. Threatened, beaten up, and forced into a terrifying game of redneck hide-and-seek, McMorrow faces his most ruthless criminals yet.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 1998
ISBN: 978-1939017796
Publisher: Islandport Press
Cover Story

It’s been seven years since Jack McMorrow moved to small-town Maine. Seven years of stringing stories―and murders―together in the backwoods has been an adventure, sure, but it has also meant a big dent in the paycheck.

Unsure at first, Jack quickly finds his feet, moving swiftly into the incessant hustle and flow of the city. Then, the Mayor is murdered in a hotel restroom, and Jack gets the ultimate cover story―or so he thinks. But the phone is ringing and the questions aren’t friendly. Jack is about to become the prime suspect in his own story.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2000
ISBN: 978-1939017772
Publisher: Islandport Press
Pretty Dead

When Jack's significant other, social service worker Roxanne Masterson, investigates allegations of physical abuse concerning the young daughter of Boston bluebloods David and Maddie Connelly, Jack senses a story. And it's a story he gets, but not the one he'd figured on. Jack and Roxanne are invited to a weekend retreat at the Connellys' Blue Harbor estate, during which a beautiful young staff member steals the show, but soon winds up dead. 

Jack and Roxanne delve into all the unpleasant possibilities, but heavy muscle shows up to discourage Jack's search, and a phone message soon forces him to put his cards on the table and the Connellys to unveil a dark secret from the past that could destroy far more than the family image. In the end, Jack must decide just where to draw the line between his friendship with the Connellys and his responsibility as a journalist to write the truth.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2003
ISBN: 978-1944762049
Publisher: Islandport Press
Home Body

Jack has reformed his bad boy ways and settled into seeming domestic tranquility. But the quiet life is short-lived when Jack rescues a homeless teen from a brutal gang beating. This gesture rewards him with yet another descent into violence, murder, and the dark underworld of at-risk kids living on the street.

As Jack prepares for the birth of his child, his efforts to save somebody else's child fail, and he must track down a stalker. Who is the predator and who is the prey in a world where no one can be trusted? It's a high stakes game of hide-and-seek––one that Jack can't afford to lose.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2004
ISBN: 978-1944762018
Publisher: Islandport Press
Damaged Goods

Jack McMorrow, his social worker wife, Roxanne, and their young daughter, Sophie, become the target of satanist Harland Wilton after Roxanne's inquiry into child abuse prompts the removal of Harland's two boys from his custody. At the same time, freelance journalist Jack pursues a story about a mysterious and troubled woman that prompts Roxanne to grow concerned about Jack blurring professional and personal lives.

As dangers converge, it will take a heroic act to save Jack, Roxanne and Sophie. The question is: who will put their life on the line at the moment of truth?

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2010
ISBN: 978-1944762667
Publisher: Islandport Press
Once Burned

Life is briefly as it should be for Jack McMorrow: He and his wife Roxanne have retreated from the stress and danger of their day jobs to raise their daughter Sophie. But when development and arson threaten the nearby town of Sanctuary, and a crazy accident brings back mistakes from Roxanne’s past, Jack’s nose for crime leads him into a darker and deeply twisted tale. Something explosive is smoldering beneath the glossy facades and picturesque town square in Sanctuary, and the enemy is closer than he thinks.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1939017918
Publisher: Islandport Press
Straw Man

When worlds collide, few are spared the collateral damage―least of all crime reporter Jack McMorrow, who has learned the hard way that trouble blooms where the cracks in human relationships meet. In this installment of the bestselling McMorrow mystery series, veteran author Gerry Boyle takes his readers into territory all-too familiar from the daily headlines: illegal gun sales, culture clashes between old and new, cyberbullying, and the random violence that poses a threat to even the closest of communities. Prosperity, Maine, is no longer the refuge from the real world that it once was, and Jack, and his wife, Roxanne, are forced to face their most destructive enemy yet––each other.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-1944762452
Publisher: Islandport Press
Random Act

Love is hell...or maybe it's just who we choose to love. After all, how do we really know who anyone is?

When Maine's favorite reporter, Jack McMorrow, heads out to the hardware store on a routine chore, little does he know that he's about to witness a senseless murder that will have vicious repercussions. With his instinct and nose for news, McMorrow chases leads that take him into the dark side of Downeast―the side the tourist brochures don't show. At the same time, his best friend, Louis has fallen for a mysterious blonde with Russian ties and a hankering for money and intrigue that could put everything Jack loves in peril.

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-1944762681
Publisher: Islandport Press
Robbed Blind

The end is coming . . . and fast.

Aging investigative reporter Jack McMorrow is tired and finding it harder and harder to keep faith in a society with seemingly no rules except “don’t get caught.” In Robbed Blind, Jack’s world is turned upside down with cops protecting weed shops, militias on the march, podcasting replacing newspapers, and his pre-teen daughter dancing on Tik Tok. Do the old ways still make sense? 

Jack struggles with his present and works to bring his battle-honed reporting skills to bear for a final story he knows may never be written—risking his life to ensure that in this case of good vs. evil, good won’t go down without a fight. But in the thirteenth and penultimate novel featuring author Gerry Boyle’s signature character, one question looms larger than ever—will Jack McMorrow survive to fight another day?

Author: Gerry Boyle
First Release: 2022
ISBN: 978-1952143496
Publisher: Islandport Press