James Hayman’s Followers (371)

James Hayman

Born

in Brooklyn, NY, The United States

November 02, 1950

Died

June 15, 2023

Website

http://www.jameshaymanthrillers.com

Twitter

jhhayman

Genre

Suspense, Crime, Fiction

Influences

Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane and Ian Rankin.

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Like one of the heroes of my thrillers, Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe, I’m a native New Yorker. McCabe was born in the Bronx. I was born in Brooklyn. And we both grew up and spent much of our working lives in the New York City before eventually moving to Portland, Maine. However that’s where the similarities end.

McCabe, after spending a couple of years at NYU Film School, dropped out and decided to join the family business and become a cop first for the NYPD and then for the Portland PD.

For my part, I graduated from Brown University without having any idea whatsoever of what I wanted to do. All I knew was that the one salable skill I thought I possessed was the ability of dreaming things up and writing them down. After looking around I r Like one of the heroes of my thrillers, Detective Sergeant Mike McCabe, I’m a native New Yorker. McCabe was born in the Bronx. I was born in Brooklyn. And we both grew up and spent much of our working lives in the New York City before eventually moving to Portland, Maine. However that’s where the similarities end.

McCabe, after spending a couple of years at NYU Film School, dropped out and decided to join the family business and become a cop first for the NYPD and then for the Portland PD.

For my part, I graduated from Brown University without having any idea whatsoever of what I wanted to do. All I knew was that the one salable skill I thought I possessed was the ability of dreaming things up and writing them down. After looking around I realized the only companies I could think of that would pay me to do both were on Madison Avenue. I joined a major New York advertising agency as a cub copywriter. Over the next few years I drifted to a couple of other agencies and finally settled in as a senior creative director at the agency I considered the best of the lot.

I thoroughly enjoyed the ad business and was good at it. I was well paid and spent my days dreaming up sometimes weird, sometimes funny, sometimes dopey ideas for mostly TV ad campaigns.
But before I knew it, more than 30 years had passed, my hair had turned from dark brown to silvery gray and I began to realize that Madison Avenue, like the Texas/Mexico border in Cormac McCarthy’s great thriller, was No Country for Old Men. My wife and I decided to pull up stakes and move full-time to a house we’d built right on the ocean on an island a mile and a half from the city of Portland.

Up in Maine I spent a couple of years writing freelance marketing pieces. But in 2005 I decided that if I didn’t start writing the suspense thriller I’d been itching to write for years, I probably never would. My first effort which I called The Cutting told the tale of an villainous surgeon who killed people to steal their hearts for use in illegal transplants. It took me nearly two years to write. But I stuck with it and when I’d finally finished with writing, polishing, editing and reediting I started looking for an agent. Wanting to shoot for the stars, I sent the manuscript and a cover letter to one of the top agents in the business, Meg Ruley of the Jane Rotrosen Agency in New York. Meg represented such top best selling thriller writers as Tess Gerritsen, Lisa Gardner and Michael Palmer among others. Sending the book to Meg first was kind of a Hail Mary play on my part.

Hail Mary’s rarely work so a little more than a week later I was stunned when Meg called me in the UK where my wife and I were vacationing and after telling me she how much she liked the book, she asked “Have you sent this to any other agents?”

“Nope. None,” I replied. “You were the first.”

“Well don’t send it anyone else,” she said. “I’d like to represent you. That is if you’re interested.”

I’m not sure how I kept my cool but after no more than a few stutters and stammers, I did manage to let her know that yes, indeed, I was very interested in having her represent me.

Meg quickly sold The Cutting to major publishers in the both the US and seven other countries and I was off and running. Over the next seven years, I followed up on the success of that first book by writing five more McCabe/Savage thrillers: The Chill of Night, Darkness First, The Girl in the Glass, and The Girl on the Bridge, which collectively sold over half a million copies and made a bunch of best seller lists including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and my home town paper, the Portland Press Herald. My latest McCabe/Savage thriller, A Fatal Obsession, is the first of the series set outside of Maine, partly in New York City, partly in rural Connecticut. My publisher, Harper Collins, is bringing it out on August 21st both in paperback and e-book form. ...more

37 posts
James Hayman's Blog

James Hayman isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.

In Praise of Words and Pictures

On Saturday October 27th I’ll be joining a “Murder of Crime Writers” at the Jesup Memorial Library in Bar Harbor, Maine for the 3rd annual Murder by the Book. (Yes, I know “a Murder” is a term usually used to describe a large group of crows, but what better term to also use for the large of Maine crime writers who’ll be gathering at the Jesup?) Many of the Crime Writers present, including me, wil

Combine Editions
James Hayman’s books

Average rating: 4.06 · 20,025 ratings · 1,424 reviews · 8 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Cutting (McCabe and Savage Thriller, #1) 4.04 avg rating — 4,843 ratings — published 2009 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Girl in the Glass (McCabe & Savage Thriller #4) 3.94 avg rating — 4,677 ratings — published 2015 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Chill of Night (McCabe and Savage Thriller #2) 4.08 avg rating — 3,549 ratings — published 2010 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Darkness First (McCabe & Savage Thriller, #3) 4.24 avg rating — 3,247 ratings — published 2013 — 8 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Girl on the Bridge (McCabe and Savage Thriller #5) 4.08 avg rating — 3,125 ratings — published 2017 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Fatal Obsession (McCabe and Savage Thriller #6) 4.11 avg rating — 583 ratings — published 2018 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	An Appeal to Tradesmen, Relating to Sundry Abuses Deeply Affecting Their Interests; With Practical Remedies really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Angstschrei: Michael McCabe 2 by James Hayman, Erich Räuker (Narrator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by James Hayman…

Series by James Hayman

McCabe & Savage Thriller (6 books)
by

James Hayman

4.06 avg rating — 20,022 ratings

Quotes by James Hayman (?)

“I wonder if you have any idea, my darling Will, what it’s been like having to play second fiddle every day of my life to such an amazing, beautiful, perfectly wonderful sister.” Will”
― James Hayman, The Girl in the Glass

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“on the floor.”
― James Hayman, Darkness First

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“He smiled back, and she knew he was hooked. What she didn’t know was that from that moment on, for Edward Whitby to share Aimée’s attention with even one other man was, for him, intolerable. And always would be.”
― James Hayman, The Girl in the Glass

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James Hayman’s Followers (371)

James Hayman

37 postsJames Hayman's Blog

In Praise of Words and Pictures

Combine EditionsJames Hayman’s books

Series by James Hayman

Topics Mentioning This Author

37 posts
James Hayman's Blog

Combine Editions
James Hayman’s books