Category Archives: Series

• Hammer Spade and the Case of the Missing Husband. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing, 2006.
• Hammer Spade and the Diamond Smugglers. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2006.
• Hammer Spade and the Merchants of Death. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2007.
• Hammer Spade and the Ring of Fire. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2007.
• Hammer Spade and the Midnight Treader. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2008.
• Hammer Spade and the Long Shooter. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2009.
• Hammer Spade and the Inca Curse. Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2009.
• Hammer Spade and the Four Horseman.  (2 vols.) Timberlake, NC: Righter Publishing Co., 2010-2011.

I can’t help but like a series that came about, in part, from a librarian’s suggestion.  Dorothy Hodder, one of the great librarians at New Hanover County Public Library, suggested to E. B. Alston, already the author of two thrillers, that he put more intrigue into his books.  This led Mr. Alston to start a story with a private detective as the main character. The story became the novel that begins this series.

Hammer Spade is a detective and bail bondsman living in Durham, North Carolina. Like many fictional private detectives, his office is in a seedy part of town and his personal life is bleak.  The first novel in the series introduces Hammer; his love interest Alonia Lockheart; Shidee Callaway, who is Hammer’s streetwise assistant; and several members of Alonia’s interesting family.  These characters reappear in later novels where they are joined by Hammer’s friends, Dave Quigley and Jack Kane.  Kane, like Hammer, is a Desert Storm veteran.

Each novel opens in North Carolina, as Hammer is asked to handle a case, but the action often shifts to other–and far more exotic–locales. South Africa, Russia, Kuwait, Tibet, and Brazil are just some of the places that Hammer’s cases take him.  Only the books with a full North Carolina setting have individual entries in this blog.