Jonathon King Books In Order

Publication Order of Max Freeman Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Jonathon King is an award winning author and the sole creator of the popular Max Freeman Crime series which is set in the Everglades as well as on the hard streets of urban south Florida. Mr. King served as a policeman and a reporter of the court for more than twenty four years working with Sun sentinel in Fort Lauderdale and the high profiling Philadelphia daily news respectively.

Over the years, Mr. King has taken his creativity a notch high by cannibalizing his previous news writing career Turing it into an interesting crime novel series which by the way is his main focus at the moment. Jonathon attributes the creativity and quality of his writing to his experience on dozens of crime scenes, several hours spent in courtrooms, days spent in Florida prison (as a guest) and previous interviews of top cops, crime victims, criminals and their syndicates as well as traumatized family members of crime victims.

In addition to the above, Mr. King admits to having witnessed several autopsies, riding in the back seat of a police patrol car in the course of a high speed chase, having a gun pressed to his head after being mistaken to be a drug dealer by an undercover cop as well as sitting in a bar and witnessing a midget cocaine dealer lick barbeque sauce off his short fingers while negotiating the sale of around 6kg amongst other things.

Mr. King also admits of spending two months alone in a cabin up north (North Carolina) back in 2000 hiding out to write the manuscript for the Blue Edge of midnight which ended up winning the 2002 Edgar Allan Poe Award as the best First Mystery Novel by an American author. As strange as it may sound, after writing three more novels in his hit series, Mr. King decided to quit journalism. Good news is, he presently serves as a full time writer in Florida. So far so good, his latest piece dubbed “Midnight guardians” is his latest installment in his Freeman Series. It is different from the rest of the installments in the sense that he set it in his beloved Everglades which is where he canoes, airboats and even tromps on a regular basis.

The Blue Edge of Midnight: The first novel Jonathon King wrote, and the first novel in the Max Freeman series, is called The Blue Edge of Midnight. This was the excellent novel which won King an Edgar Award.

Many years ago, Max Freeman left the police department where he worked in Philadelphia after a kid accidently died when there was a police shootout. Max left Philadelphia and now lives in the Florida Everglades.

However Max can never escape the guilt which haunts him over it and is living a life of misery. Then one day Max stumbles across a dead body – a young girl – and everything in Freemans life changes.

Unfortunately for Max, he becomes the #1 suspect in the murder of the girl. With the police looking to pin everything on him, Freeman is the only one who can prove his innocence – by tracking down the real murderer.

There’s more to it than just a one off murder too – Max discovers that there has been previous abductions of young girls and they have a serial murderer on their hands.

Kings writing style is incredible and really makes you feel as if you are in Florida. Everything about the book – from the natural dialogue to the true to life characters – is amazing and was a very special debut.

A Visible Darkness: Great news for Freeman fans as Max returned in a sequel just a year later – A Visible Darkness. In Fort Lauderdale, multiple old women – all African-American – are seemingly murdered although the police are going along with the medical examiners declaration of death by natural causes.

An old friend asks Max to look into this. Max feels it’s a waste of time but hey you have to help out a friend and that’s what he does by looking into it. It’s an interesting style as the mystery is taken away from the book – we know who the murderer is right from the beginning. However it’s more about how they’re doing it and the chase Max goes on to stop the killer – and nothing will get in his way.

There’s also some solid backstory added to the character with multiple flashbacks to Max’s life in Philly.

Eye of Vengenace: In 2006 King took a break from the Max Freeman series of novels after 4 of them to write a standalone thriller, Eye of Vengeance. From all accounts a lot of people ignored this title (based on quantity of reviews online compared to the Freeman series) but they’re missing out because it’s a solid novel.

It features Nick Miller, a journalist and single father who is trying to balance it all out while dealing day to day with the horrific crimes taking place. In Eye of Vengeance, a serial sniper is on the loose and actually killed the person who killed Nicks wife. And it looks like the sniper is gunning for Nick.

There’s something about a sniper that can really run chills through your spine and King does that with this book. Where the book struggles however is a lot of the story plays out in the past basically – we learn via old media stories and also the memory of Nick. It slows the pace down and Nick isn’t anywhere near as good a character as Freeman.

It’s still a solid book however – just not anywhere near the quality of the Freeman series. However it has the usual quality writing we can expect from King.

6 Responses to “Jonathon King”

1. Tom Purvin: 2 years ago

   I enjoyed reading about the Royal Flamingo Villas. My family owned one of the 5 beachfront villas. It truly is a paradise!

   Reply
2. James Deyo: 3 years ago

   Enjoyed reading Max Freeman so much I am starting third time around the series

   Reply
3. Joy Weaver: 3 years ago

   I absolutely enjoy your Max Freeman series so far. I am a member of audible but they only have your first 2. Do you know why they do not have your series? I am legally blind and love listening to books, this is why I use audible.
   Thank you.

   Reply
   • Graeme: 3 years ago

     Not sure why that is the case. Book 6 & 7 are available but book 3, 4 and 5 are not.

     It looks like on Amazon you do have the option of purchasing them on MP3 CD if that helps. You may have to click the “see all formats and editions” link and it will be there.

     Reply
   • Laurie: 3 years ago

     I ended up borrowing books 3 & 4 on CD from our public library to listen to and reading book 5.

     Reply
4. 1hhh1: 4 years ago

   What’s up with Max Freeman ? no new books since 2015

   Reply