Troika: The Bedford Trilogy

By Thomas Blanks

This trilogy of previously released books contains three Mike Bedford novels: When Lions Sleep; A Cold, Red Goodbye; and The Shade. When Lions Sleep is a novel told from the point of view of the main character, Mike Bedford. Enduring a brutal childhood with a cruel, alcoholic father, Mike grew up seeing the world differently than most people. His brilliant mind finds inconsistencies most people miss, and he questions them. His search for the real truth didn't make him popular with the nuns who taught him in school. Mike becomes an undercover operative for the United States government in the former Soviet Union collecting intelligence, again thinking everyone has missed the real truth. The KGB, of course, has their own ideas of the truth. Mike's differences of opinion with his bosses eventually lead him to a new career as a private detective where he continues his quest. The real truth is often harder to determine than you expect, especially when Mike meets a boy who is enduring the same kind of brutal childhood as he did. To what lengths will Mike go to help the boy? No one was there to help Mike when he was young, but he wishes there had been.In A Cold, Red Goodbye, a Russian woman asks for help from Mike Bedford late on a cold, rainy December afternoon. Her husband is missing. The Russian communities of Philadelphia and New York hold the clues, Philadelphia's Bustleton and Brooklyn's Brighton Beach. There is money to follow, and when money talks, the truth is silent. There are secrets to uncover and lies have been told, but Mike is used to that. He has been down this road before. In The Shade, the third novel about private investigator Mike Bedford by Thomas Blanks, death is all around. In the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley, "the shade" is death. So, the "horror of the shade" is the horror of death, which is all that looms after this life. After being asked to help the Philadelphia Police by working his Russian contacts for information, Mike is sucked into the world of the Russian mafia where one murder for hire sets off a deadly chain reaction leaving a dozen people dead. While helping the police, he is hired by the wife of one of the victims to track down the hitman responsible for her husband's death. The road to justice can be long and winding, and some have their own ideas about justice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1728673119
• ISBN13: 9781728673110
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 659 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.6" x 6.0"