Frank Johnson
Created by Ed Lynskey

FRANK JOHNSON is a thirtyish-divorcee working as a private eye and sometime gunsmith in the fictitious town of Pelham, Virginia. The town, once rural, is now being swallowed by the suburban sprawl from Washington, DC.

Franks gripes a lot about his staff of computer geeks, but he's a bit of a Poindexter himself -- he may detest Microsoft, but he's also a Linux weenie. But that's not the only contradiction in his life -- he's also an on-again, off-again reformed and then not-so-reformed smoker and drinker.

Aiding and abetting Frank in his adventures are three supporting characters. Robert Gatlin is a rather eccentric billionaire whose posh office is near Middleburg's horse aristocracy. His big passion in life, besides eating and hamming it up on COURT TV, is sticking it to "The Man" every chance he can get. And, of course, prying Frank Johnson out of legal jams. He also employs Johnson on occasion to do heavy lifting, and has dispatched him to such locales as Hanio, Frankfurt, Bermuda, Turkey, Boston, New York, Toronto, Mexico City, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Florida.

Frank occasionally works with two brothers: Chet and Gerald Peyton. Chet is a teen-ager, up for about anything. He usually works driving heavy equipment, but is usually available when Frank needs him. His older brother Gerald, a bail bonds enforcer (AKA: bounty hunter), is also called in sometimes.

Frank and his gang have appeared in over forty short stories so far, in numerous anthologies, magazines and e-zines, including Plots With Guns, Futures, Judas, Detective Mystery Stories, 3rdDegree, Mississippi Review and Hard Luck Stories. Their creator, the astoundingly prolific Ed Lynsky, has worked at one time or another as a gunsmith, fry cook, political campaign worker, technical writer, support engineer, and a sash and door millworker, as well as an occasional book reviewer for The New York Times and The Washington Post. He grew up in rural Virginia and has traveled to Toronto, Bermuda, Frankfurt, Ankara, and Mexico City. Today, he lives and works in the gray swirls of suburbia surrounding Washington, DC.

The first Frank Johnson novel, The Dirt-Brown Derby, was published in 2006, and several more are lined up, ready to go.

UNDER OATH

• "The Dirt-Brown Derby is hard, fast, and unsentimental. PI Frank Johnson is a guy you want on your side."
  (Bill Crider)

SHORT STORIES

• "The Fixer" (August 2001, Malone's White Fedora)
• "Malice Becomes Her" (November 2001, 3 A.M. Magazine)
• "Murder, Tally Ho" (November 2001, Judas Ezine)
• "Stet" (January 2002, Judas)
• "Swag" (February 2002, The Writer's Hood Mystery)
• "Death Row Casanova" (February 2002, Plots With Guns)
• "A Dead Duck Can't Whistle" (March 2002, Nefarious)
• "Topsy Turvy" (May/June 2002, Plots With Guns)
• "Troglodytes" (June 2002, Judas)
• "Shiny Hammers, Bright Nails" (July 12, 2002, South Ocean Review)
• "This Is It, Mr. Johnson" (August 2002, Orchard Press Mysteries)
• "Chalice" (September 2002, Judas)
• "Not Too Dirty, Not Too Sweet" (Autumn 2002, The Moonwort Review)
• "Black Felt" (November/December 2002, Plots With Guns)
• "Think Pink" (Winter 2002, The Moonwort Review)
• "Next of Kin" (Jan./Feb./March 2003, Futures)
• "The Black Lacquer Coffin" (Spring 2003, 3rdegree.com)
• "Vanished" (May 2003, Detective Mystery Stories)
• "Didymus" (Summer 2003, Down These Dark Streets Anthology)
• "After Big Noise in Hanoi" (Summer 2003, Hard Luck Stories)
• "Plain Vanilla Wrapper" (September 2003, Mysterical-e)
• "Wood Shavings" (October 2003, Shred of Evidence)
• "Pawn" (October/November 2003, Crime Scene Scotland)
  
• "The Hanoi Hilton" (Spring 2003, Volume 9, No. 2, Mississippi Review)
• "Mariachi Redux" (November/December 2003, Plots With Guns)
• "Against the Season" (not yet published, Shots)
• "A Treeless Land" (December 2003/January 2004, Crime Scene Scotland)
• "Green Earrings" (Spring 2004, Nuvein Magazine)
• "Gold Medal" (April 2004, Detective Mystery Stories)
  
• "Goethe’s Needles" (April/May 2004, Crime Scene Scotland)
• "Agog Ages Ago" (August 2004, Dead Mule)
• "The Zinc Zoo" (August 2004, Nuvein Magazine)
• "Running Up the Score" (September/October 2004,Crime Scene Scotland)
  
• "The Perfect Victim" (Fall 2004, Hard Luck Stories)
• "Bankok Sferics" (Fall 2004, Blood and Thunder/Univ. of Oklahoma)
• "The Hearse Driver" (Winter 2004, Combat: The Literary Expression of Battlefield Touchstones)
• "Ahoy Boy" (Winter 2004, BULLET)
  
• "Following the Sunsphere" (Winter 2005, Volume 11, No. 1, Mississippi Review Online)
• "Shooting Blanks at the Alamo" (January/February 2005, Crime Scene Scotland)
• "Wire to Wire" (March 2005, Mysterical-e)
• "Silversonic" (April 2005, Nuvein Magazine)
• "Daddy Warbucks" (July/August 2005, Crime Scene Scotland)
  
• "The Rebel Yell" (November/December 2005, Crime Scene Scotland )
• "How to Defuse a Terrorist" (Winter 2005, BULLET)
• "Laetrile" (May 2006, Thuglit)

COLLECTIONS

• Out of Town for a Few Days (2004)
  E-book, available from BooksForABuck.com, containing 15 stories .featuring Frank Johnson.

NOVELS

• The Dirt-Brown Derby (2006) ..Buy this book
• The Blue Cheer (2007) ..Buy this book

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.