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AR Simmons
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America (the)
Genres: Crime, Mystery, Thriller
Skills: Press/Media Interview, Reading/Literary Event, Self-publishing Workshop/Training, Writing Workshop
AR Simmons is a native of the Courtois Hills region of the eastern Missouri Ozarks. A country boy, he actually attended a one-room school, and he did walk a mile to and from school (although not in the snow and uphill both ways). His parents were factory workers, and the family worked a subsistence farm on land cleared from the native forest by his grandfather.
Before college, he worked as a carpenter's helper and a factory worker before doing a stint in the Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam. His military experience provided an invaluable opportunity to see a world far different from his own. Perhaps even more importantly, it allowed him to become acquainted with his country. The racial, ethnic, and cultural makeup of his squad was varied. The men came from every quarter of the land. This diversity changed forever his concept of "American."
His military service earned him GI Bill benefits, which financed his entire college career. After declaring and rejecting majors in Business (lacked interest) and Art (passably talented, but color blind), he settled on History, in which he obtained BA and MA degrees. Passing up a doctoral program (he was 27, married, and had no job), he took a public school teaching position "until something better came along." To his amazement, it was a calling suited him.
He began writing sci-fi short stories, but he gradually turned to the suspense novels which he always enjoyed reading. In 2003, he began serializing his novels on-line. Today, he and his wife still live on the farm his grandfather settled. His roots (four generations deep) are in the Ozarks where the Richard Carter series is set. Using the culture, language, and mores of this "Bible Belt"
AR Simmons' books
Bonne Femme
Bonne Femme is the debut novel of AR Simmons. Ex-Marine Richard Carter betrays the woman he loves in order to save her from a former squad mate he thinks is out to kill her. Bright and intuitive Jill Belbenoit tries to decide which of the two violent men is her greater threat.
In this thriller, obsession and fear lead to a seemingly insane act before a campaign of physical intimidation and psychological terror throws an intelligent but vulnerable woman into a nightmare world which may or may not be exactly as it appears to be. The triple climax will send shivers up your spine and make you check the locks before going to bed.
Try Bonne Femme if you enjoy: Suspense novels, Psychological Crime Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Serial Killer Stories, or Romantic Suspense Stories (as opposed to "bodice rippers").
Cold Tears
Cold Tears is the follow up to Bonne Femme, the first of AR Simmons' Richard Carter series. It is a mystery concerning a single mother and her missing baby. If you already know Richard and Jill, you should enjoy Cold Tears.
Richard and Jill flee their unwanted celebrity in Michigan by moving to southwest Missouri where she pursues a graduate degree while he tries to come to terms with the things he's been forced to do.
Is it redemption or ruination when he agrees to find out about Molly's missing baby? Is Molly what she appears? Or is she what the local cops say she is?
Jill struggles for balance and sanity for her damaged husband. Richard struggles to be the "godsend" that Molly sees him as. Molly struggles with the memories of her addiction and guilt.
Richard's amateur investigation crosses that of a real P.I. working for a famous country music impresario. The local police are much more concerned with not annoying the celebrity than they are in finding Molly's baby.
Why are they convinced that Molly herself is to blame? And what are "cold tears?"
Try Cold Tears (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Crime Mystery Series, Police Procedurals, or Detective series with strong female characters.
Canaan Camp
In this third novel in AR Simmons' series, Richard Carter hunts a sociopath leaving bodies strewn from Ozark logging trails to a militia compound in Oregon. Canaan Camp is a stand-alone contemporary crime thriller.
This third book takes place in Hawthorn County where Richard and Jill moved at the end of Cold Tears. Richard, now a low-ranking rural deputy, tangles with another stranger killer, Bobby Lee Paget. If you enjoyed hating Mic Boyd in Bonne Femme, you will feel the same about Paget.
The killer hides in Canaan Camp, the self-isolated commune of Father Joshua's Wilderness Church. Among the sheep of the flock are a naive young man and a remarkable beauty with a horrific past. Paget has plans for each.
Try Canaan Camp (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Serial Killer Stories, or Detective Series.
The King Snake
The King Snake, the fifth Richard Carter novel by AR Simmons, is a contemporary crime mystery. A series of snipings in Hawthorn County pull Richard into The Ozark Foothills Drug Task Force.
A sniper is picking off low-level drug abusers. Is it a drug turf war? Maybe. Then the sniper begins targeting policemen. So is police corruption involved?
The FBI categorizes homicide by motive: criminal enterprise, criminal competition, contract murder and drug murder, all of which seem possible motives for the sniper (The King Snake).
When a friend is killed, it nearly plunges Richard into clinical depression. But there might be even worse to come. The King Snake could be drawing a bead on him.
Like all the stories, this one involves an obsession—but one of a different stripe.
Try The King Snake (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Crime Mystery Series, Police Procedurals, or Detective Series with culturally immersive elements.
Call Her Sabine
Deputy Richard Carter returns in the sixth novel of AR Simmons' tales of obsession. Call Her Sabine is a contemporary crime mystery pitting a persistent "everyman" against a cunning abductor with an odd mania.
How did coed Charlie Fouts get here? Does anyone even know that she is gone? And what does "the freak" want of her?
Two young women are found drowned within the space of two weeks. Carter has a policeman's distrust of coincidence, but it appears one the first woman's death was an accident, while the second was a suicide. Then a college athlete goes missing during an early-morning jog, causing him to suspect that a local killer has claimed his third victim.
As Carter tries to reconstruct the last day she was seen, Charlie is held by an unknown abductor who only communicates with her via computer screen. Can she do what is necessary to survive? Can Carter find her in time?
Try Call Her Sabine (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime or Psychological Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Detective Series, or Tales of Obsession.
Secret Song
This fourth novel in AR Simmons' series is a contemporary crime mystery. In Secret Song (a stand-alone story) Richard Carter investigates voyeurism, home invasion, and a disappearance while trying to defend a pitiable ex-con from small-town persecution.
When Marie Preslar's shallow grave is discovered simultaneously with the parole and return of Harold Porter, the accomplice of the man executed for killing her twenty years earlier, someone takes exception. Small-towns don't forget--or forgive. No one in Blue Creek wants Harold. The predictable persecution is intended to "run him off." Or is it worse than that?
Meanwhile, Deputy Richard Carter has a voyeur/home invader to catch and a burglar-turned -murderer to catch. Then three people disappear. He has too much to worry about. The last thing he needs is for his usually level-headed and perceptive wife to become personally involved with Harold.
Try Secret Song if you enjoy: Crime Mystery Series, Police Procedurals, or Detective Series that put you in the culture as well as the action.
Devilry
This seventh Richard Carter novel by AR Simmons is another tale of obsession. Devilry is a contemporary crime mystery involving murders that mirror the "devilry" of the Civil War bushwhackers.
A young deer hunter nervously waits in his stand, scanning the brush through his scope. He spots something in the pre-dawn, but it isn't a deer. When he climbs down to check it out, he finds two dead bodies.
To Deputy Richard Carter, motive for the murders seems clear--at first.
A few days later, however, an angry landowner, searching for the source of a wildfire, stumbles onto a horror scene that could have come from the Spanish Inquisition.
Another body left in the woods? This time the victim is a penniless nobody from nowhere. There doesn't seem to be a motive for his murder--but there always is.
This murder was senseless, sadistic--pure devilry.
You will enjoy Devilry (a stand-alone novel) if you like: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Detective Series, or Tales of Obsession with a bit of history.
The Daughter
This tenth Richard Carter novel by AR Simmons is a contemporary crime mystery. The Daughter involves the disappearance of Blue Creek's "golden girl," whose smiling face adorns the billboard promoting the local junior college.
In this mystery/crime tale, Richard Carter becomes emotionally involved while trying to discover what happened to pretty and brilliant Shara McGregor. She left for Springfield, where she was to attend the university in the fall, but her abandoned car was found abandoned in an area of the Ozarks called "The Irish Wilderness." Besides her blood in the car, there is no physical evidence.
Small town politics, a tale of possible blackmail, and internet-driven perversion threaten to make the girl a victim twice over. However, unexpected evidence from beyond the grave helps Carter uncover the horrific truth and put the girl's murderers where they belong.
Try The Daughter (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Crime Mystery Series, Police Procedurals, or Detective Series.
Cold Fury
This ninth novel by AR Simmons sees things get personal for Deputy Richard Carter. Cold Fury is a contemporary crime mystery involving drugs and other kinds of craziness, something the hills have in abundance.
Death by exposure. A frozen man found nude in an Ozark vacation cabin? It seems that the only crime here is that of abandoning a corpse.
Ron Guidry gets "the cold case" when Richard Carter is given a politically sensitive assignment. Guidry chafes at the restraints placed on his investigation, argues with the boss, and takes vacation time. When he fails to return, Richard follows his "cold trail" and runs smack into a DEA narc who knows more than he is saying.
A second "popsicle" turns up in Blue Creek, confirming that the exposure death was a homicide.
Is Richard Carter being helped by the DEA agent? Managed? Or played?
Try Road Shrines (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime Thrillers, Police Procedurals, or Detective Series with just a bit of classical mythology.
Road Shrines
This eighth Richard Carter novel by AR Simmons is a multiple murder mystery. Road Shrines is a contemporary crime mystery involving the hunt for a serial killer with a long history.
We've all seen them, those roadside crosses marking the scene of a tragedy. The ones in Hawthorn County serve another purpose.
An unauthorized exhumation unearths the body of a girl whose abduction riveted the nation and sparked a nation-wide search eighteen years earlier. As federal investigators and national media descend on Blue Creek, Deputy Richard Carter is frozen out of the case, but not out of the spotlight. He is held up as an example of rural ineptitude by a news pundit demanding a quick solution to what appears to be a serial killer who has been operating undetected out of the area for decades.
Meanwhile, he tries to track down a missing girl who may or may not have been a victim of the killer now known as "The Gardener."
What better place to hide a body but in a cemetery?
What better way to remember a treasured one than with a shrine?
Try Road Shrines (a stand-alone novel) if you enjoy: Mystery Suspense Series, Crime Thrillers, Police Procedurals, Detective Series, or Serial Murder Stories.