Titus: Florida Crime Thriller Series Books 1-3

by John D. Patten

The first three books in the Titus Florida Crime Thriller series: Miami Burn, Miami Chill, and Miami Storm.

Meet Titus.

Former detective. Just out of prison for a crime he didn’t commit. In Miami only for revenge.

A high-speed roller-coaster of events soon transforms Titus into South Florida’s #1 unofficial, unlicensed private detective. A man who knows how to use his fists. A man ordinary people call for help. A man unafraid to dive into the city’s glitzy sleazy underworld to stand up to power and corruption.

But Titus is a broken man himself in need of redemption, who slowly builds a new life with the help of a fiery ex-con preacher and a beautiful Miami cop.

Miami Burn

Titus came to Miami to kill a man. Plain and simple. Fresh off a prison stint for a crime he didn't commit and out for blood.

But when a wealthy socialite begs Titus to track down her missing daughter, he dives head first into a seedy Miami underworld of lowlife thugs, celebrity wannabes, and women as beautiful as they are deadly. Titus soon finds himself up against an organized crime boss, a crooked politician, and a hard-nosed Miami detective. Nobody, it seems, wants the girl found, but Titus doesn’t scare easy. Armed with two fists and razor-sharp wit, Titus unravels a mystery deeper, darker, and more twisted than a simple missing girl.

Miami Chill

He thought he’d be long gone by now, but new clues about his fiancée’s murder have kept him in Miami. While trying to piece it all together and working a security gig at a famous hotel on Ocean Drive, he’s literally thrown into the middle of a blackmail scheme against a stunning billionaire CEO. Titus being Titus, he can’t resist offering his special style of two-fisted help—but she insists that she doesn’t need it and orders him to not get involved.

Too bad Titus doesn’t take orders.

Especially after clues point to a human-smuggling ring protected by a mysterious figure named “Jakob,” a foreign agent embedded in a position of power. Titus teams up with a rogue cop to smash the ring, but is thwarted at every turn by a bullheaded FBI agent and a slithery assassin who enjoys torture.

Now he’s uncovered a personal connection to all this that changes his world forever and slams him face-to-face with his own tortured past—including a person he never expected to see again.

Miami Storm

A wealthy New York City attorney on the payroll of a Mexican drug czar is found murdered—in exactly the manner Titus said he’d do it on a recording played on the Miami six o'clock news. Now Titus is wanted by a stack of three-letter government agencies, the Miami-Dade Police, and the notorious Quintana cartel.

But that’s the least of his problems.

Titus wakes up in a hospital bed in a strange mansion—heavily medicated, under guard, unable to walk, with no memory of what happened. As if things couldn’t get any worse, the door blasts open and his life takes another turn so bizarre that even he can’t believe his own eyes...

735 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 18, 2020

About the author

John D. Patten occasionally skipped class because he was glued to a Spenser mystery by Robert B. Parker. He would be late for jobs because he got caught up in a Travis McGee adventure by John D. MacDonald. He memorized sarcastic Philip Marlowe lines from detective stories by Raymond Chandler. Now, after all these years, he’s finally figured out maybe he should be writing hard-boiled thrillers of his own.