My Cart

Close

Monarch - Quinn Book One

REFINE

Monarch - Quinn Book One

MONARCH: A Quinn novel, from the Sam Jameson universe. Over 1,000,000 fans in 17 countries.

The runaway #1 Bestseller from USA Today Bestselling Author Lars Emmerich.

This is a standalone novel, but Quinn first appears in Books One and Two of the Sam Jameson series. Get them on sale here

About this book

”This might be the best thriller I've ever read!”

Quinn does bad things to bad people, but he does them for good reasons. It's a common refrain in the national security game.

But Quinn is anything but common.

He has chased and caught rogue spies, brought vengeance to those who deserved it, survived incredible odds, and thrived in one of the world's deadliest jobs.

Yet nothing has prepared him for Cathrijne.

She is otherworldly, ethereal, beautiful, brilliant...

And now Catherijne is missing, an apparent casualty of an operation gone bad.

That same failed operation has left Quinn in the crosshairs of some of the world's most ruthless players -- Russians for sure, Islamists as a matter of course, maybe also Mossad... and most disconcerting of all, his own clandestine service seems hellbent on his demise.

And yet, though he's under attack from all quarters, Quinn is concerned with only one thing: saving Catherijne.

Will he piece together the cryptic clues in time to save her from an unspeakable end?

Does he have the strength and skill to avoid the same end himself?

MONARCH is the first Quinn novel from USA Today Bestselling Author Lars Emmerich, and is part of the Sam Jameson universe that has thrilled over 1,000,000 readers in seventeen countries.

"Lars is my all-time favorite author."

"Quinn is an absolute knockout. This has to be made into a movie!"

"Lars just keeps getting better."

"I devoured this book in one sitting. I couldn't make myself stop reading LOL"

"Quinn is destined for the big screen!"

"SO DAMN GOOD!"

    Enjoy a sample from MONARCH

     


    I’m a Cancer and a cancer. My favorite inventions are chocolate and copulation. I have one green eye and one gray one, and a tough-looking scar on my cheek. I have freakishly high pain tolerance. I’m taller and more muscular than I have a right to be, and tonight I am wearing a pretentious suit with a silk tie and a sterling silver tie bar and a pair of overpriced shoes that squeeze my feet. Size fourteen, if you must know. Tonight, I am a banker.

    I was a doctor once. Not the kind who went to medical school or got an advanced degree in something obscure. I was just the kind of doctor who could wear scrubs and fake a bedside manner for a short period of time. That gig lasted long enough to teach me that, like patients, doctors are merely supplicants to insurance companies. Bummer.

    But tonight I’m not a supplicant or a patient or a doctor, not even a fake one. Tonight, as I said, I am a banker. On my arm is a tall blonde woman in a form-fitting power suit. Jacket and button-down blouse up top, tight skirt down below. Her name is Catharijne, with an extra j right there near the end of it to let you know she’s exotic and fantastic in bed and nobody to trifle with. Her form inspires longing, lustful stares. She tastes like honey with a dash of spice. She too loves chocolate. She has an advanced degree and a day job and is smarter and funnier and tougher and sexier than most people I’ve met. She speaks with a sophisticated accent that isn’t quite Continental but isn’t Eastern, either. We’re a match made in heaven and I am in love with her, which is one reason why I don’t mind her price tag. Another reason is that I’m not paying.

    That honor belongs to a man named Fredericks.

    Fredericks is not his name.

    If you were to paint a walrus pink and give it a combover and a foul mouth and a federal paycheck, you’d have something indistinguishable from Fredericks. Also, Fredericks likes underage prostitutes, preferably from foreign countries, which is a fact that Fredericks knows I know and have pictures to prove, which really makes me Fredericks’s boss and not the other way around. But we both still play the parts we were assigned at the beginning of our little melodrama.

    I dial Fredericks’s telephone number while my other hand moves down to that magical spot on Catharijne’s backside that isn’t quite her back but isn’t yet her derrière. It’s a fantastical part of her body, full of promise and possibility and the giddy tingle of things yet to come, and I get lost in the whole experience. So it jars me when Fredericks’s dental-drill of a voice pierces my ear.

    “Quinn,” he says. Quinn is not my name.

    “Martinson,” I say. Martinson is also not Fredericks’s name. I don’t know Fredericks’s name. I suspect he doesn’t know mine, but I’ve never asked him, mostly because I would truly hate it if he did know what was on my driver’s license. My real one, I mean. Which is not to say that my fake ones aren’t real too, because they are.

    “I hope you’re feeling lucky,” Fredericks says.

    “I’m feeling something,” I say, which is a great opportunity for me to move my hand lower on Catharijne’s delicious anatomy. It’s the kind of anatomy that I would start and win a war over. My flirtatious overtures are not wasted on Catharijne, who smiles a little and touches me with a rough tenderness that makes me wonder whether all of the Fredericks nonsense can’t wait until some other fiscal year.

    “I can see that,” Fredericks says, and even though I fully expect to be within his line of sight, hearing confirmation that he is watching us is still somehow a small violation. I think it’s because there’s no relationship in Fredericks’s life that doesn’t involve violation of one form or another. He’s a violating kind of guy. Truly despicable down to his mitochondrial DNA.

    It’s one of the reasons I still work with him. Apart from being bewildering and occasionally amusing, his unadulterated rottenness means I always know how to handle Fredericks.

    “I’m just calling to tell you that you should really bathe yourself more frequently,” I say. “You’re upwind and it’s making my eyes water.”

    “I’m airing myself out just for you, Nancy.”

    Fredericks.

    I push the red button on the cell phone—not mine, not anyone’s I know, and not protected by a difficult password—and toss the sleek, elegant, pocket-sized supercomputer into the river.

    River might be underselling it. The name of it is the Nieuwe Maas, and it’s really a greedy tendril of frigid North Sea water licking its chops and thinking that when the levy finally breaks, it’s going to gobble up Rotterdam like crudités.

    Rotterdam, Holland. Or Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It’s hard to keep it all straight, but imagine a Venn diagram. All of Holland is inside the Netherlands, but all of the Netherlands is not Holland. And to add to everyone’s general confusion, there’s a North Holland and a South Holland. Both are the size of one of my feet. Big for feet, small for provinces, especially ones inhabited by unusually tall blonde people.

    Like Catharijne. She distracts me with a kiss. Apparently I’ve made a positive impression over the past couple of days, because it’s a beautiful and powerful kiss, and I wonder what would happen if, instead of doing the thing Fredericks is paying me to do, I were to just disappear with Catharijne.

    It’s an idle thought. I know what would happen. I’ve seen it happen to guys like me before.

    I’ve made it happen to guys like me before.

    I shoo the thought away. I haven’t worked in six months, and maybe my lengthy recuperation is to blame for my momentary loss of focus. Despite the sailboats and beachside cabanas and tropical drinks and long mornings in bed that were all so clearly on offer in Catharijne’s electric kiss, I tighten down and get to work.