James Garrison

A graduate of the University of North Carolina and Duke Law School, James Garrison practiced law as an in-house attorney with Texaco Inc. and its joint ventures until he was paid to go away in a corporate merger. Despite his wife’s expectation (and hope) that he would continue his legal career, he stayed home for the kids—in case they called from wherever they were—and decided to return to his first loves: literature and creative writing. After much study and research, he began work on his first novel, QL 4, based on his experiences as a military policeman in Vietnam, where he had ended up when he was drafted during his first year in law school. Set in the Mekong Delta in 1970, QL 4 is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, and crime among soldiers on the same side in an unpopular war. The title comes from the colonial highway that the American soldiers followed—in the footsteps of the French soldiers before them—south from Saigon into the Mekong Delta. QL 4 has won awards for literary and military fiction, and it was a finalist for the 2018 Montaigne Medal. His short stories and poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies. His poem "Lost: On the Staten Island Ferry" was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart prize. His second novel, The Safecracker, was released by TouchPoint Press in September 2019. The Safecracker is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek legal thriller, which sometimes slips in a little humor or a subtle (or maybe not so subtle) parody of traditional genre fiction, including the John Grisham type. Lawyers named McFee and Sharp. A villain called Fisheye. A safecracker who tries to steal a safe from a fast food restaurant rather than just open it and take the money. And the safe is encased in a block of concrete. Then there’s a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of a dog named Princess.

James Garrison has a webpage at https://jamesgarrison-author.com, and he is also on FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/garrijd), Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.