R. D. Byron-Smith Books

In his latest novel, "The Sorcerer's Tattoo," R.D. Byron-Smith turns to the mysterious world of black magic: conjurers and necromancers. Detective Wade Whiteside was a macho superstar in the homicide bureau until killing a suspect and his own personal demons ganged up to disgrace him. Exiled to a spineless desk job, he surreptitiously investigates a string of strange homicides. Soon, a road map of tattooed corpses leads him to a modern-day castle, where secrets of 16th Century divination, black arts and ritual death thrive, and dank catacombs wait.

Three decades ago a male nurse single-handedly plunged Southern California into a health care panic in which doctors feverishly scoured medical charts to see if any of their patients had been murdered, and judges ordered buried bodies dug up and autopsied for lethal doses of Lidocaine, a drug still used routinely in hospital emergency rooms. This detailed memoir by the newspaper reporter who covered the crimes features an interview with the killer, who in between bites of his beefsteak, talks about his murder victims -- months before his arrest!

When mutilated bodies of women begin bobbing up under famed London Bridge in the Arizona desert, aging Detective Garret Browning soon learns these aren't cut-and-dried, big-city serial murders. He is thrust into a world of Native American legend, supernatural lore and ancient vendettas, where, when the bloodthirsty walk upright, it doesn't mean they're human.

When the newsroom police scanner buzzes with initial reports of a grisly murder of a Southern California family, hardcore crime reporter Kate McShane rushes to the scene of the crime, unaware she is stumbling high-heels and all into the web of a police coverup -- her own Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper a willing co-conspirator.

Whether crashing the set of a Robert Redford movie, chasing down the true father of sex goddess Marilyn Monroe, or stumbling into a deadly shootout between cops and bank robbers, there was nary a dull moment in forty years of news reporting by R.D. Byron-Smith. In his witty, often irreverent memoir the author takes readers along for a bumpy joyride in pursuit of news at all costs. Readers ride shotgun as he confronts death row killers, introduces oddballs and media meatheads, and harasses Hollywood celebs. Readers even get a bleacher's seat as he goes tête-à-tête with a disgraced U.S. president at the World Series. The author's wild ride is worth admission. And best of all, they are, every tale, True Stories I Never Told My Kids.