Legal thrillers · West Michigan
J. Drew Colvin
A practicing attorney writing the kind of trouble he's spent a career trying to keep his clients out of. His debut novel, The Executor, is out now.
The Books
One out now. More on the way.
Book One
The Executor
"Harry Miles died today." A Grand Rapids attorney inherits an estate that isn't what it looks like — and a debt he didn't know he owed.
Read more →Book Two
Coming Later
Details on the next book in the series will land here as they're ready.
TheExecutor
A dead client. A key he wasn't supposed to have. A debt that's finally come due.
A novel by J. Drew Colvin
Page One
Blocked Number ›
Today 11:42 AM
Delivered — no reply sent
That's how Jimmy Sullivan finds out. It does not get simpler from there.
The Book
Jimmy Sullivan owed Harry Miles a favor. He assumed he'd never have to pay it.
Sullivan is a Grand Rapids attorney with a blown knee, an ex-wife he still can't argue with properly, and a stack of bills he has no way to cover. Harry Miles was a client — and once, years ago, the man who quietly made a problem disappear before it could end Sullivan's career. Neither of them ever mentioned it again. They didn't need to.
Now Harry has drowned on vacation. There's no funeral. There's a widow half his age with an envelope of papers she says she can't make sense of. And taped behind a photograph in a bank basement, there's a key Harry left for exactly one person.
Opening that box makes Sullivan the executor of an estate that is nothing like it appears — and puts him between a Detroit fixer, a Chicago syndicate's laundered money, and a woman who has been two steps ahead of him since the day they met.
Harry talked in odds his whole life. He'd have set a line on how this ends.
Harry Miles , 68
Local businessman Harry Miles died this week in a boating accident while on vacation.
A fixture of the West Michigan business community for four decades, Miles was known for his fervent support of local athletics.
He is survived by his son, Harold Jr., and his second wife, Janet.
No public viewing or funeral arrangements have been announced.
I found out about the death of Harry Miles by text.
My ex-wife and I were squared off across a table at a diner on the east side of Grand Rapids. It wasn't one of those hidden gem greasy spoons, but it was convenient, and wasn't one of our old haunts. Neutral ground. I was winning our regular weekly argument when I received the text, and it threw me off my game.
"What is it?" Michelle asked with a dose of genuine concern when I didn't respond to her latest barb about me not being able to take care of some bills I had promised to cover. She was right, of course, about the money being a problem, but that wasn't really what she wanted to argue about. She just couldn't bring herself to argue about the other thing, and I didn't want that either.
I stared at the text. Sent from a blocked private number, it simply said, Harry Miles died today. After a moment, my phone buzzed again, and a new message popped up. Just thought you should know.
I stared at the phone, waiting for more words to come, but none did.
Looking back at Michelle, who had those little crinkles of confusion I was so familiar with forming above her nose, I felt a sudden surge of affection from the simple pleasure of being with her again, if only for her to nag me about my lack of follow-through.
"Everything okay?" she asked. Concern filled her light hazel eyes as they probed mine. For that moment, at least, she was the Michelle I had fallen for years ago. It made me smile.
"I know I may not have said it often enough, but you're beautiful."
The Author
J. Drew Colvin
J. Drew Colvin is a practicing attorney who has spent years in and around the courtrooms and conference tables of West Michigan. He often handles cases like the one at the start of The Executor, although typically without the gunplay.
His hobbies include skydiving, rock-climbing, deep-sea diving, and rank prevarication. His first author crush was Raymond Chandler. He lives on some acreage outside Grand Rapids, Michigan with his family and a pet llama, Fred.
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