Most Popular Books by William E. Butterworth IV

From #1 New York Times bestselling authors W.E.B. Griffin and William E. Butterworth IV comes the first Clandestine Operations novel—featuring a new kind of threat and a different breed of warrior. In the first weeks after World War II, James D. Cronley, Jr., is recruited for a new enterprise that will eventually be transformed into something called the CIA. For a new war has already begun against an enemy that is bigger, smarter, and more vicious: the Soviet Union. The Soviets have hit the ground running, and Cronley’s job is to help frustrate them, harass them, and spy on them any way he can. But his first assignment might be his last. He’s got only seven days to extract a vital piece of information from a Soviet agent, and he’s already managed to rile up his superior officers. If he fails now, his intelligence career could be the shortest in history. Because there are enemies everywhere—and, as Cronley is about to find out, some of them wear the same uniform he does...

June 1943. Many Germans—some of them high-ranking officers—believe the tides of war have turned against them. Increased activity suggests there may be truth to whispers heard by Office of Strategic Services spies: that the Nazis are extorting Jews outside Germany to buy their relatives’ freedom from extermination camps, then smuggling the ransom in Operation Phoenix to fund safe havens in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay for senior Nazi officials when Germany falls. With so much money and more at stake, lives are, too, and it’s up to USMC Major Cletus Frade—the top OSS spook in “neutral” Argentina—to find out. That is, before the ruthless Nazis order his murder...

August, 1943: In his short time as a spy with the Office of Strategic Services, young Cletus Frade has faced many unlikely situations, but nothing like his new assignment. Having helped Lieutenant Colonel Wilhelm Frogger escape a Mississippi P.O.W. camp, he must now get the defiant German to turn against his country.

The dramatic New York Times-bestselling adventure in W.E.B. Griffin’s Badge of Honor series about the Philadelphia police force. Having investigated his share of gruesome murders, Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne is beginning to think nothing can shock him—until the case of a young socialite’s death lands on his desk. The Camilla Rose Morgan he’d known as a teenager was beautiful and brilliant—how was it possible she’d jumped to her death from her own balcony? Her brother tells Payne she’d tragically been battling a lifetime of mental demons, and there is plenty of evidence of it, but still...something just doesn’t sit right. The more Payne digs, the more complications he discovers. Reputations are on the line here, and lives—and if Payne doesn’t tread carefully, one of them may be his own.

The Assassination Option is the latest in the Clandestine Operations crime series (Jove) by W.E.B. Griffin, following Captain James Cronley as he navigates the dangerous and deadly world of international intrigue after World War II. James Cronley''s first successful mission for the new Central Intelligence Directorate has drawn all kinds of attention, including that from the Soviets, his own Pentagon and a seething J. Edgar Hoover. Cronley knows that if just one thing goes wrong, he''s likely to get thrown to the wolves. And he thinks he hears them howling now.

The former Presidential Agent’s Office of Organizational Analysis has been disbanded. Charley Castillo and his colleagues have retired, and the sudden death of the President has brought an adversarial Commander-in-Chief into the Oval Office... But just because Castillo is out of the government doesn’t mean he’s out of business. He still has the skills and the manpower to do what others can’t or won’t do. And his first job is a real killer. A barrel filled with some nightmarishly lethal biohazard material has been shipped to an Army medical lab—material that Castillo and his men were supposed to have destroyed on a mission. Clearly, the message is that more of the deadly material remains. But who has it? And what do they want? With lives at stake—including his own—Castillo knows that he’s not going to like the answers one damn bit...

The dramatic new novel in the Philadelphia police saga by #1 New York Times–bestselling author W. E. B. Griffin. In Philadelphia—suffering among the country’s highest murder rates—the tension between the Philadelphia Police Department and its Citizens Oversight Committee has long been reaching a boiling point. That turmoil turns from bad to worse shortly after the committee begins targeting police shootings—especially those of twenty-seven-year-old Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne, the “Wyatt Earp of the Main Line”—and then the committee’s combative leader is found shot dead point-blank on the front porch of his run-down Philly row house. As chanting protesters fill the streets, the city threatens to erupt. Payne, among many others accused of being complicit in the leader’s death, becomes quietly furious. He suspects there’s something deeper behind it all, but what? Ordered to stay out of the line of fire, he struggles ahead to do what he does best—his job. He’s been investigating the murder of a young family. A reporter, working on an illicit drug series for Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Mickey O’Hara, has been killed with his wife and child, a note stapled to his chest warning that the drug stories are to stop. Period. While Payne knows that he, like his pal O’Hara, cannot back down, he also knows that they damn sure could be among the next to die. . . .

From #1 New York Times-bestselling author W.E.B. Griffin comes a dramatic thriller in the Clandestine Operations series about the Cold War, the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency—and a new breed of warrior. January, 1946: Two WACs leave an officers'' club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents'' first mistake, and their last. One of the WACs, a blonde woman improbably named Claudette Colbert, works for the new Directorate of Central Intelligence, and three of the men end up dead and the fourth wounded. The “incident,” however, will send shock waves rippling up and down the line, and have major repercussions not only for Claudette, but for her boss, James Cronley, Chief DCI-Europe, and for everybody involved in their still-evolving enterprise. For, though the Germans may have been defeated, Cronley and his company are on the front lines of an entirely different kind of war now. The enemy has changed, the rules have changed—and the stakes have never been higher.

Murders are on the rise in Philadelphia-but no one seems to mind because the victims are all fugitives with histories of heinous sex crimes against women and children. Worse for Homicide Sergeant Matt Payne, the main suspect is leaving evidence for police to find. But when copycat killings start popping up due to vigilante groups dealing out their own justice, Payne must find out who''s behind the chaos before the violence overtakes the city.

Assigned to the Nuremberg war trials, special agent James Cronley, Jr., finds himself fighting several wars at once, in the dramatic new Clandestine Operations novel about the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Cold War. When Jim Cronley hears he''s just won the Legion of Merit, he figures there''s another shoe to drop, and it''s a big one: he''s out as Chief, DCI-Europe. His new assignments, however, couldn''t be bigger: to protect the U.S. chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials from a rumored Soviet NKGB kidnapping, and to hunt down and dismantle the infamous Odessa, an organization dedicated to helping Nazi war criminals escape to South America. It doesn''t take long for the first attempt on his life, and then the second. NKGB or Odessa? Who can tell? The deeper he pushes, the more secrets tumble out: a scheme to swap Nazi gold for currency, a religious cult organized around Himmler himself, an NKGB agent who is actually working for the Mossad, a German cousin who turns out to be more malevolent than he appears--and a distractingly attractive newspaperwoman who seems to be asking an awful lot of questions. Which one will turn out to be the most dangerous? Cronley wishes he knew.

Mexican drug cartels are shooting up the streets of Laredo and El Paso. Somali pirates are holding three U.S. tankers for ransom. The President has had enough - he needs to get hold of Colonel Charley Castillo and his band of fighters. Unfortunately, everybody knows that the President hates Castillo, forcibly retiring him from the military. And Castillo''s men are scattered. How will it all play out? No one knows for sure, but for Castillo and company, only one thing is definite: it is their HAZARDOUS DUTY.

W.E.B. Griffin continues his gripping Men at War series, featuring the legendary OSS. As the Battle of the Atlantic rages, German U-boats are sinking U.S. vessels at will. Meanwhile, preparations are being made to invade Sicily and Italy. As the war heats up, "Wild Bill" Donovan and his secret agents find themselves battling on two fronts at once. And fate is about to deal them a surprise that may doom them all.

Charley Castillo and the former members of Presidential Agent’s Office of Organizational Analysis are officially “retired.” But that doesn’t mean they’re out of action… At a Mexican roadblock, a US Embassy SUV is stopped at gunpoint, three of its passengers murdered, and a fourth kidnapped. Everything points to the drug cartels, especially when the kidnappers say they will return the hostage if a cartel kingpin is released from US federal prison. But when word gets to Castillo and his group of retired spies and special operators, they have their doubts. They believe that it''s a diversion—that the murders and kidnapping were ordered by someone to lure Castillo & Company to their deaths. But even knowing that may not save them. Powerful forces in the US government are arrayed against them as well, and if one side doesn''t get them...the other side will.

Special agent James Cronley Jr. finds that fighting both ex-Nazis and the Soviet NKGB can lead to strange bedfellows, in the dramatic new Clandestine Operations novel about the birth of the CIA and the Cold War. A month ago, Cronley managed to capture two notorious Nazi war criminals, but not without leaving some dead bodies and outraged Austrian police in his wake. He''s been lying low ever since, but that little vacation is about to end. Somebody--Odessa, the NKGB, the Hungarian Secret Police?--has broken the criminals out of jail, and he must track them down again. But there''s more to it than that. Evidence has surfaced that in the war''s last gasps, Heinrich Himmler had stashed away a fortune to build a secret religion, dedicated both to Himmler and to creating the Fourth Reich. That money is still out there in the hands of Odessa, and that infamous organization seems to have acquired a surprising--and troubling--ally. Cronley is fast finding out that the phrase "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" can mean a lot of different things, and that it is not always clear which people he can trust and which are out to kill him.

"Published in 2011 by arrangement with G.P. Putnam''s Sons"--T.p. verso.

Philadelphia Homicide Sergeant Matthew Payne is paired with a Texas Ranger to bring down a murderer with Mexican cartel connections. The odd couple of the Philly cop and the Texas lawman must run down the killer and his gang-before the body count rises again.

Tapped by FDR to assist the Allies'' efforts to secure France and build an atomic bomb, OSS spy chief Wild Bill Donovan and top agent Dick Canidy coordinate a sabotage mission in Germany while countering a mole who is leaking Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviets.

The last person Philadelphia homicide detective Matt Payne expected to hear from again was Texas Ranger Jim Byrth, with whom he’d broken a Mexican human trafficking ring. But Byrth isn’t making a social call. He’s found a connection between the Mexican drug cartels and the Russian mob. Russian girls are being smuggled through the Caribbean to work in the U.S. as prostitutes, and some of them are dying or just disappearing. The trail leads right to Philadelphia, where teenage girls are being lured from foster homes, police sources are turning up dead, and the lone living witness—the daughter of a prominent family—has gone into hiding. It’s up to Matt Payne and his Texas Ranger partner to find her—and hope like hell they get to her first.…

W.E.B. Griffin’s iconoclastic OSS heroes face an historic challenge in the brand-new volume of the New York Times-bestselling series. Critics and fans alike welcomed the return of the “shrewd, sharp, rousing” (Kirkus Reviews) Men at War series: “The Saboteurs is good entertainment and the fast-paced and exciting novel Griffin’s readers have come to expect. This is Griffin’s 36th novel and his son’s first; one wonders how prolific a force Griffin & Son will be!” (Library Journal) Now, Dick Canidy and colleagues in the Office of Strategic Services face an even greater task—to convince Hitler and the Axis powers that the invasion of the European continent will take place anywhere but on the beaches of Nazi-occupied France. “Wild Bill” Donovan’s men have several tactics in mind, but some of the people they must use are not the most reliable—are, in fact, most likely spying for both sides – so the deceptions require layer upon layer of intrigue, and all it will take is one slip to send the whole thing tumbling down like a house of cards. Are the OSS agents up to it? They certainly think so. And then the body is found floating off the coast of Spain. . . . Filled to the brim with action, character, and the deep understanding of the military heart and mind that have made Griffin’s books so outstanding, The Double Agents is irresistible storyteller from a master of the craft.

A dead girl, a wealthy family, and indications of drug use. It''s a toxic mix that leads Philadelphia detective Matt Payne deep into an unexpected maelstrom of deceit and madness in the latest entry in the New York Times bestselling Badge of Honor series. In the dark shadows of downtown Philadelphia, the body of a seventeen-year-old suburban high school cheerleader, clad only in her uniform top and with massive bruising on her throat, is found floating in the Delaware River. When Homicide sergeant Matt Payne surveys the scene, he shakes his head at yet another vicious murder in a city that''s suffering a record number of killings. And he knows this one, involving the petite, pretty daughter of a wealthy entrepreneur, will play long and loud in the media. Payne soon learns that the father had his vessel outfitted with miniature security cameras. Almost the entire crime was captured as digital video. Despite some imperfections, the video shows—in painful, shocking detail—what happened. And who the parents feared was responsible: the University of Pennsylvania student, an ill-mannered and arrogant Middle Easterner with movie-star looks, who they had forbidden their daughter to see again. Still, it''s not case closed. The murderer has gone underground. Payne races to find the killer before he can unleash an even more savage attack.