Author Spotlight: Topper Jones

Award-winning author Christopher G. Jones, Ph.D., goes under the pseudonym Topper Jones for his detective novels featuring surfing crime-fighter Thaddeus Hanlon and his sassy partner Bri de la Guerra. All That Glisters—book one in the series—released September 20, 2023, in print and e-book from The Wild Rose Press. Oceano Beach Bedlam, the second volume in the Hanlon & de la Guerra Mystery Series, released St. Patrick’s Day—March 17, 2025. Book three is near completion.

Before devoting himself full-time to writing, Jones worked in public accounting and consulting, and as a university professor teaching financial reporting, software development, and business communication. He is the co-author of four textbooks and over fifty professional journal articles. Other publishing credits include general interest newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, creative nonfiction, and children’s fiction.

Jones is a member of the International Thriller Writers, an affiliate member of the Mystery Writers of America, and serves on the board of the Write On—St. George chapter of the League of Utah Writers. To be close to his family, he makes his home in the southwestern desert rather than his native California, but every chance he gets, he treks the 450 miles to the Pacific Coast to get in a little “water therapy” and catch a few waves.

 

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A little bit about Author Topper Jones…

My first murder mystery, ALL THAT GLISTERS, was 45 years in the making. I got the initial idea for the book when I was 27 after reading Robin Cook’s medical thriller “Coma.” I thought: If a physician can write a bestseller, why can’t a certified public accountant? We were both professionals. All I needed was a preposterous premise.

Rather than have my protagonist discover [Spoiler Alert] human organs being illegally harvested for the black market as in Coma, I decided to have my main characters discover “something” equally chilling regarding the financial markets—a disturbing “something” that would upend everything. Total economic meltdown and the consequences! Banks failing, riots in the streets, and breadlines stretching from coast to coast.

A few years later, when I was 32 working as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company, I penned the first draft of ALL THAT GLISTERS on my morning commute into downtown Boston. Fortunately, that draft never found a home. The writing was amateurish and unschooled. So, I took classes in creative writing and kept plugging away at craft.

When I retired from my day job 35 years later, I pulled out my abandoned proverbial “novel in the drawer” and with the help of a developmental editor specializing in mysteries, I rewrote the thing from scratch. All except the preposterous premise. By then, I was 67.

This is Author Topper Jones’s writing and publication journey in his own words…

Inspiration to start writing…

I first realized I wanted to be a writer in High School. I was sitting on the bench waiting for the Junior Varsity baseball coach to put me in to play second base. One of my teammates handed me the school newspaper. He pointed his stubby finger at a poem on the page.

“What’s this, Jones?” he said, as he pressed his lips to the back of his hands and made a kissing sound. And then in a swoon-worthy voice, he started reading: “Love grows, so too we. This passion—”

I grabbed the paper from him. “I’m gonna kill Seevy,” I said. In Study Hall, she had asked to look at what I had been working on, something personal. And now…now it was in print? Without my permission?

But that byline. Oh, that byline. Seeing my name on something I had written was a total rush! I was hooked. So instead of dispatching Seevy, I thanked her for giving me my first publication.

I write murder mysteries with a dash of romance. Why mysteries? I love the challenge of figuring out the who, the how, and the why. But mostly the why.

Topper’s works…

All of my works are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine book sellers.

All That Glisters: A Thad Hanlon & Bri de la Guerra Mystery (Book One)

Oceano Beach Bedlam: A Thad Hanlon & Bri de la Guerra Mystery(Book Two)

 

All That Glisters (Book One) Blurb

When the facts don’t add up in his surf buddy’s bizarre death, forensic consultant (and daddy-to-be) Thaddeus Hanlon investigates, volunteering to go undercover to pick up where best friend Rafi Silva left off in a secret probe of the U.S. gold stockpile—every last bullion bar.

Rafi’s spunky fiancée, Bri de la Guerra, has suspicions of her own and soon joins Thad on the hunt for answers. Together, the two amateur sleuths delve deep, stumbling onto a financial a-stock-alypse in the making, triggering a brutal manhunt along the Eastern seaboard meant to silence anyone looking to set the ledger straight.

Surfing crime-fighter Thaddeus Jude Hanlon and his sassy sidekick Bri de la Guerra debut in this fast-moving, action-packed mystery from Topper Jones. All That Glisters is an edgy contemporary whodunit involving financial skullduggery, high-level political intrigue, and a behind-the-scenes view of cyber sleuthing.

 

Oceano Beach Bedlam (Book Two) Blurb

Hanlon & de la Guerra have gone full service. In this second book in the surfing crime-fighter mystery series, Thad Hanlon and his martial-arts-obsessed partner, Bri de la Guerra, hang out their shingle as newly licensed private investigators. Now in addition to fraud-busting, the two detectives do it all. Background checks. Surveillance. Even finding lost souls. Just about anything that requires sleuthing or going undercover.

All they need is a client.

That’s when a former exotic dancer from Bakersfield CA shows up looking for her surf prodigy son who’s gone missing in the wake of cult violence terrorizing the California Central Coast.

 

One of Topper’s favourite scenes from Oceano Beach Bedlam…

Inside the hopper, atop the wire mesh conveyor belt used to sift sand and trap debris, were more body parts, bloated and reeking of decomposition. Looked to be the body of an older teen. The tattoo on the youth’s neck gave me pause.

Bri took my son from me. “You recognize him, don’t you?”

I did.

I had seen the young man a day ago outside Surf’s Up Donuts, the local hangout for post-surf session nutrition. He was in handcuffs with a couple of his BVL 13 homies. The Pismo Beach PD had rousted the Bakersfield Varrio Locos 13 gang members in a weapons search and had not come up empty. NeckTat didn’t look happy then. Someone had made sure he would not look happy ever again.

The crowd of gawkers surrounding the tractor retreated somewhat—inches instead of feet—as State Park Ranger Cody Bolton pulled up in his patrol vehicle. He left his SUV siren screaming, hopped out of the 4×4, and handed me a roll of yellow police tape.

“Hanlon,” he said, “help me secure the crime scene.” From the cargo hold of his sport utility, he took a stack of orange traffic cones and ringed the tractor and the sand equipment. I stretched the barricade tape around the cones to form an oblong perimeter.

My surf buddy, Ranger Cody, took the DO NOT CROSS tape from me and tossed it into the back of his SUV. “Now we wait for Five Cities Forensics.” He killed the siren but left his patrol lights flashing.

The forensic team did their thing. The investigators took a lot of photos of the victim’s body, especially the ear-to-ear cut to the gang member’s neck, just above his BVL 13 tattoo.

As the techs put away their gear, Ranger Cody instructed me to head over to the Five Cities Sheriff’s South Station off Cabrillo Highway in Oceano to give a formal statement.

Detective Naiya Ygnacio was waiting for me at the Station House entrance. She ushered me into the interview room, directed me to sit, and queued the audio by verbally confirming the date, time, location, and persons present. “Hanlon,” she continued, “for the record, state your full name and profession.”

“Come on, Naiya. Is this necessary?”

The detective shoved the digital recorder across the interrogation room table. A red LED glowed. “Talk,” she said.

“Thaddeus Jude Hanlon, Private Investigator. My clients refer to me as the patron saint of lost causes.”

“Cut the nonsense, Hanlon. You don’t have any clients. And for the record, no one in Five Cities thinks you’re funny.”

“Zael thinks I’m funny.”

“Three-year-olds don’t count.”

I wasn’t feeling the respect, fellow crime fighter’s warrant. But then, again, Naiya was being bleakly honest. I really didn’t have any clients. And nothing in the development pipeline.

 

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