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Brent Monahan

Located on the idyllic Georgia coast, Jekyl Island was the playground of the rich at the turn of the last century. Vanderbilts, Goulds, Rockefellers, and other members of elite society vacationed there, enjoying the finest aspects of Southern hospitality that money could buy and importing the rest from New York. Indeed, the money was good: the club's one hundred members controlled one sixth of the nation's wealth.

When one of the club's members is shot to death on the island, his fellow captains of industry anxiously conclude it was as a hunting accident. Is the impending visit to the Jekyl Island Club by President McKinley the only reason? Could J. P. Morgan himself have been the one who pulled the trigger? Whose side is member and millionaire newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer on?

The answer to whether or not the richest of the rich can literally get away with murder lies in the hands of local sheriff John Le Brun, a wily Civil War veteran who has his own agenda with the Yankees who bought Jekyl Island.

This ingenious novel raises Brent Monahan to the first rank of contemporary entertainers. The real Jekyl Island Club, its members, and many real events from American history of the era are interwoven within a plot that could easily have happened. Cleverly plotted and delightfully told, The Jekyl Island Club is suspenseful storytelling at its finest.

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A John Le Brun Novel

The Jekyl Island Club: A John Le Brun Novel, Book 1

In 1905, John Le Brun makes his first excursion to England to visit import broker Geoffrey Moore. Le Brun and Moore became friends six years earlier while Le Brun was Sheriff of Brunswick, Georgia and enmeshed in a perplexing murder case at the very exclusive Jekyl Island Club. Now retired, the self-taught Le Brun is fulfilling a long-standing dream of measuring himself against the greatest minds in the greatest city of the greatest empire of that era.

Upon his arrival, Moore introduces Le Brun to the social world of the 'men's club' - hundreds of which exist in and about London, where men of similar backgrounds and often great power meet. Chief among Le Brun's new acquaintances is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author and inventor of the great fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. While visiting the Sceptred Isle Club, where the ex-sheriff is scheduled to give a lecture, Le Brun and Doyle hear a series of muffled gunshots. A tandem investigation reveals that several prominent men have been murdered inside the gambling room, where the inner door was locked and the heavily-bolted outer door was inexplicably unlocked. There are no survivors, no suspects, and no signs of either the weapon used in the crime or the thousands of pounds being gambled.

Le Brun is retained by the club to solve the murders and preserve its reputation. Moving as a stranger in this Edwardian world of elegance and privilege, John Le Brun must unravel a Byzantine crime whose purpose has wide-reaching implications for the entire British Empire.

The Sceptred Isle Club: A John Le Brun Novel, Book 2

In the summer of 1906, a distinguished member of one of New York's most prestigious and powerful men's clubs - the Metropolitan Club - is found with his throat slashed, murdered within the club's walls. By all eyewitness accounts, the murder is another member - a man who, in actuality, wasn't there that night and, in fact, was across town in plain view of a hundred witnesses who can attest to his innocence. 

To J. P. Morgan, founding member of the Metropolitan Club, there is only one man to which he can trust with the swift and proper resolution of this impossible crime - his one-time nemesis, Sheriff John Le Brun of Jekyl Island, Georgia. Le Brun, a rough-hewn but brilliant man, is lured to turn of the century New York City by both his own curiosity about the city itself as well as the puzzle of the crime. 

Thrust in the midst of the cream of Manhattan society and intelligentsia, the elite and the powerful - including actor William Gillette, newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer, architect Stanford White, and financial colossal J. P. Morgan himself - Le Brun finds himself in a deadly struggle and race against time with an unseen foe, a mind perhaps as nimble as his own.

The Manhattan Island Clubs: A John Le Brun Novel, Book 3

"Quietly annoying and tenacious" Sheriff John Le Brun has earned a reputation for solving wickedly complex crimes, from his home town of Brunswick, Georgia to London, England. Now retired, he finds himself mysteriously hired to solve the 1908 murder of the owner of a high-priced Manhattan brothel. The client's letterhead indicates J. P. Morgan. The Titan of Wall St. denies its validity but himself hires Le Brun to not only solve the crime but also expose the impostor.
 

As John peels away layer upon layer of facts, he realizes that he is exploring the police-protected vice of prostitution, which is a source of livelihood for one out of every three hundred women in New York City. Le Brun discovers a connection on St. Simons Island, where he holds a membership to an exclusive club. The island was the locale of the last illegal U.S. importation of African slaves. Now history may be repeating itself, for the purpose of sex slavery.

The St. Simons Island Club: A John Le Brun Novel, Book 4

When retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise. However, they soon discover they’ve been lured to the island in part to tout its attributes as a burgeoning vacation retreat to wealthy investors back home. Instead of finding tranquility among the tropical isle’s quaint villages and sandy beaches, they encounter a land teeming with racial, social, and economic tension. The brutal murders of a local plantation owner’s family find John putting his renowned detective skills to use, with Lordis readily playing assistant.
 

Once again, the shrewd detective must capitalize on his “outsider” status to stay several steps ahead of the locals, many of whom seem to harbor dark motives. Is the culprit one of the white landowners the exclusive St. Lucia Island Club counts among its membership; the descendants of former African slaves said to inhabit the island’s inland jungles; or someone else entirely? As the body count rises, John and Lordis race to uncover St. Lucia’s deepest mysteries, including secret identities, long-held rivalries, and who stands to profit most from the island’s future. The St. Lucia Island Club paints a vivid portrait of the Caribbean island’s scenic beauty and complicated history at the turn of the twentieth century.