Bobby Cain & Harper McCoy

Created by D.P. Lyle

Okay, so BOBBY CAIN and HARPER McCOY aren’t your usual male/female duo of crimefighters — they’re brother and sister. More or less.

“Adopted” and raised as siblings by a itinerant group of hustlers, scam artists, tramps and thieves that was at various times called “a family, a clan or a gypsy band,” Bobby and Harper were just kids when the FBI swooped in and arrested the entire gang of almost sixty–about three dozen adults, and their assorted natural and adopted children.

Bobby and Harper were both sent into the system as wards of the state (always a fun prospect), and didn’t reconnect until fifteen years later, both having ended up in the military–although there their paths diverged slightly

Bobby was essentially an assassin, a hands-on kind of guy trained by the US military and specializing in covert eliminations (he’s particularly good with a knife), and Harper, no slouch herself, went with the US Navy and the CIA, where she learned to run black ops and run all sorts of psychological mind games on designated targets.

So, not exactly the Partridge Family, then.

But now they’re out and about, both civilians with rather particular skill sets. They’ve reunited and now live together in a Nashville condo, having set up a small detective agency, specializing in fixing the “unfixable”–and they don’t mind cutting a few corners to get justice for their clients.

Still, nobody told them that in trying to find a college girl who’s gone missing in Colorado they’d end up going after some sicko back in Tennessee who buys kidnapped women, tattoos them and then sets them free so other sickos can hunt them down.

And that’s the thing. Judging from the over-the-top action in the debut, Skin in the Game (2019), this proposed series will be more action-packed thriller than detective novel, drawing comparisons to Lee Child (don’t they all?), David Baldacci, Vince Flynn and the like. Hell, the series is even billed as  “Cain/Harper Thrillers.” 

Which could be a lot of fun. We shall see…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author comes about thrillerdom naturally. He runs runs ITW’s Online Thriller School, and he’s an award-winning, best-selling author of both fiction and nonfiction (including the Jake Longly P.I. series), regularly receiving star-studded blurbs from some pretty big guns in the thriller and mystery genres. A forensics expert, he’s served as a consultant to numerous fellow novelists and screenwriters of popular TV shows. He also co-hosted (with Jan Burke) Crime and Science Radio, and currently hosts the Criminal Mischief podcast series. He lives in Orange County, California.

UNDER OATH

• “Terrific—truly sinister, scary and suspenseful. Lyle never lets you down.”
  — Lee Child
• “Skin in the Game is The Most Dangerous Game on steroids. Fast, relentless, and cunning.”
  — David Morrell
• “Packed with edge of the seat tension, Skin in the Game takes hunting to an astonishing, and frightening, new level.”
  — Robert Dugoni,

NOVELS

• Skin in the Game (2019) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Bad Acts (2020) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
• Tallyman (2022) | Buy this book | Kindle it!

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.