David Rich Books In Order

Publication Order of Rollie Waters Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Akashic Noir Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

David Rich is a screenwriter and author who is best known for the “Lieutenant Rollie Waters” series of novels. As a screenwriter, he has sold his work to major production companies and studios and Europe and the United States. He is best known as the writer of “Renegades” the feature film that starred Lou Diamond Philips. Rich was brought up on a large farm in Southwestern Colorado and as a teen he attended the University of Colorado. After graduating from college, he went to Law School at the University of Chicago and then on to practice law with the firm of Lewis and Roca in Phoenix. The firm had become famous for the handling of the Miranda case though he never was involved in it. After practicing the law for several years, he got a job at the ASU College of Law where he was an adjunct professor teaching legal writing and supervising the legal clinic. David would also try his hand at private practice but soon discovered that he liked being an assistant attorney general more. He would then find himself appointed judge pro tem by the Maricopa County Superior. This was a great job as most attorneys preferred a settlement to any case that was assigned to him.

After working for several years working David Rich retired and together with his wife they now travel in an RV all across the world. Since they now pursue a life of travel, are always on the move and they have been to almost all the continents and countries in the world. During this time, he has been actively writing travel stories for all manner of publications including GoNOMAD and International living. He also does some blogging about his travels at their joint travel website David and Mary Around the World and his website at jdavidrich.com. MyTripJournal.com which is another of their travel websites has at one point been featured on LonelyPlanet.com. While he has come to be known for his fiction, he started out writing nonfiction work. In his work the “Myths of the Tribe” that was first published in 1993, he looked into the influence of organized religion on economics, government, and ethics. Since he embarked on his travels across the planet, he has been writing travel works the most notable of which is “RV the World.” The book details their travels across more than 170 countries and comes with a lot of advice on how to travel. The books can be found in both paperback and eBook formats online.

As for how he got started writing, David has asserted that he got inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock at the tender age of eight. As an eight-year-old child, he had read a story about a depressed man that jumped out of the car though he now believes it was just a silly story. He would then find an incredible story of sailing down the coast of Mexico on Hobie cat and thought that would have been incredibly exciting. He had always loved private eye and spy stories and never felt anything for procedural drams. As such, some of the authors that have had a lot of influence on his writing include the likes of Conrad, Greene, Kipling, le Carre, Chandler, and Hammet. Rich loves the fact that so many films have been inspired or been adapted from the works of these authors. When he retired from being a judge and decided to travel, he began keeping a journal of his adventures that are then chronicled in stories that he publishes. As for the “Lieutenant Rollie Waters” series he got inspiration from different threads even though the prominent one was about a guy whose father made a living conning people. David spent a lot of time thinking about the father-son relationship and how the kid would turn out given the terrible upbringing and weird relationship. He believed that it would make for a fine story to make the son a marine as opposed to the less disciplined and carefree environment that he had lived in with his father. When he is not writing his novels, he can be found mentoring MFA candidates at a local college or being a youth basketball coach.

David Rich’s Caravan of Thieves is the story of Rollie Waters who has for the longest time been the smartest guy in a room. He is working as an undercover marine and he is always at least two steps away from trouble. This is not a skill he was taught at the military academy but rather what he gleaned from his father who was a con artist. He had not seen his father Dan for years even though he has learned how to offer cheap things with one hand and take back more with the other. But unlike his father, Rollie has never been a criminal. Rollie’s childhood was a combination of some well-constructed lies that had to be stretched so thin that he had found it almost impossible to know what was what. It is only when he is a marine doing undercover jobs that he feels comfortable even though he is living a false identity. The work he does is dangerous but it keeps him out of trouble and allows him to make better use of his talents. He was enjoying his assignment when out of nowhere, he is reassigned to the brig and put in charge of locating a man named Dan Waters, who had disappeared with a ton of government money. The authorities do not know Dan is his father but Rollie still has to find the man by trawling though dimly remembered memories from childhood. Success in the endeavor may require him to go undercover as himself, which is not something he would have ever hoped for.

“Middle Man” by David Rich sees Rollie Waters recruited into an elite covert organization named the SHADE. He is being asked to find and get back millions of dollars that had been recovered from the cache of the dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iraq War. The money had been shipped home in the caskets of soldiers killed in the war but a lot of it had gone missing on the way. Rollie now needs to go undercover to investigate the plot and the people behind the scheme. Dan Waters his father who is a charming con artist and inveterate liar was taken out trying to get to the first $25 million. It turns out that he had discovered the conspiracy which had been hatched by some influential military officers, including some general that had nearly toasted Rollie when he was on his last tour in Afghanistan. Rollie goes on an undercover operation to the labyrinthine streets of Erbil to Houston, Texas, and into the loving arms of an enigmatic and stunning woman whose motives are almost impossible to tell. Over the years, he has become more spy than soldier but is now dealing with a man who has stolen a fortune and is one of the most deceitful and murderous persons he ever met.