This image is the cover for the book Mayday, The Jack Merchant & Sarah Ballard Novels

Mayday, The Jack Merchant & Sarah Ballard Novels

Bill Eidson scored a hit with THE REPO, the first installment of an acclaimed series featuring ex-DEA Agent Jack Merchant and boat repossession contractor Sarah Ballard. In THE MAYDAY, Eidson continues their intimate, fractious partnership as they search for a man's children, missing on the high seas. No one believes Matt Coulter's story of his foundered sailboat, a life raft adrift at night, and a rescue turned kidnapping-least of all, the police. Jack and Sarah don't either, at first. But they reluctantly take the case, and the further they follow its twists and turns, the more convinced they become that the missing children are still alive. At least for now.

"Eidson is a fine adventure writer, with the ability to shift among scenes, sketch in minor characters and create a pair of heroes whose vulnerabilities entice and intrigue us."
—Washington Post

"Gradually the skeptical Merchant and Ballard come to believe in the existence of a particularly nasty, modern-day pirate. Under Eidson's cool and expert guidance, so will you."
—Chicago Tribune 

Bill Eidson

Bill Eidson’s critically acclaimed thrillers are never too far from the sea, influenced by his growing up and living in New England. From the dive instructor in The Little Brother who slowly discovers his new housemate is a psychopath, to the ex-DEA agent in The Mayday hired to find two children everyone else believes were lost at sea, Eidson’s fast-paced novels involve ordinary people who cross courses with the violent among us all. Eidson’s books are not only page-turners, but his characters, both the heroic and the vicious, come fully to life.


His novels have been favorably reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Herald, the Providence Journal, and Entertainment Weekly, and have received starred reviews in KirkusReviews and Publishers Weekly. He has received praise from authors such as Robert B. Parker and Peter Straub, and he has been compared to Elmore Leonard. The Boston Globe’s review of One Bad Thing said, “Eidson writes a tough, direct prose edged with irony, and he may well be a successor, at last, to the much-missed John D. MacDonald.” Three of Eidson’s books have been optioned for movies and translated for foreign rights. A Kirkus Reviews line about The Mayday sums it up for all of Eidson’s work: “Here’s crime fiction the way it’s supposed to be.” To learn more about Bill’s freelance writing and his books, go to www.billeidson.com.

Open Road Media