The Picture Kills — The Thrill Ride Begins

Every Picture Tells a Story – But What if That Story is a Lie?

When you’re covered in mud, running from men with guns, and stuck in small spaces with very little clothing on, it’s amazing what you learn about a person. Steven Quintana was once a top Army reconnaissance photographer … until he made a fatal mistake. A boy was killed, and Steven’s military career was cut short, all due to a photo he took. Now he works as a paparazzo in Hollywood where his photos can’t hurt anybody. But when movie star Julia Travers is kidnapped, Steven discovers the criminals used photos he took to hide their crime. Realizing he’s still harming people with his camera, he swears to fix his mistake. But the last person Julia wants rushing to her rescue is the paparazzo who got her into trouble in the first place. The Picture Kills is a sexy, fast-paced thriller that starts in Hollywood and climaxes in the remote cays of the Bahamas.

Reviews for The Picture Kills

Writer’s Digest National Book Competition: 5 out of 5 stars

Settings are stellar and richly detailed. We’re gripped from start to finish ... pacing is spectacular, and story excels. Characters are multi-dimensional and settings gleam.

Sample Reviews from Amazon. Overall 4.6 out of 5 stars

A thrilling page-turner with real literary value… combines the international intrigue of Lee Child, the procedural know-how of Michael Connelly, and yes, the Hollywood insider's expertise of Jackie Collins, with a plot that takes the reader on a Bondian adventure across the globe.

The book comes together in a shocking hair-raising climax that only later will the reader realize had been set up by the author chapters in advance.

Steve Quintana is…a new thriller hero who's human, prone to mistakes, frailty and self-doubt, yet with Scot Harvath power, Angus MacGyver ingenuity and Ethan Hunt resilience that makes him ripe for a continuing literary series.

Six Passengers, Five Parachutes — A True Action Thriller

It’s a race from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Hong Kong to Mexico, ending on a plane crashing into the Pacific Ocean…

Steven Quintana is tracking an international group of investors who create illegal high-end entertainment to indulge their darkest fantasies. They’re the same men behind the kidnapping of movie-star Julia Travers in The Picture Kills. Now Steven has uncovered their latest underground project — convicted killers must fight to the death in front of an audience of high-rollers gambling on the outcome. But before Steven can unmask the conspirators, they shoot him and leave him to die. Steven survives, however, and is even more obsessed with exposing the group. Being "dead" is the perfect cover for digging deeper and infiltrating the show. The only person who knows everything is … Julia Travers. She'll do anything to keep Steven safe, even if that means sabotaging his dangerous undercover investigation. In the second book of The Quintana Adventures, Steven suffers deception, betrayal and brutal attacks, but never wavers in his determination to expose the craziest reality show ever created.

Reviews for Six Passengers, Five Parachutes

From Writer’s Digest National Book Competition: 5 out of 5 stars

The author has a stellar instinct for crafting interactions between characters…fabulous foreboding and panic… an engaging read and, in Steven, a character who could live on the big screen.

Sample Reviews on Amazon Overall 4.9 out of 5 stars

The adventures of Steve Quintana are as compelling as ever … with the action moving at breakneck speed. Bull’s work is up there with Connelly, Cussler, and Patterson when it comes to creating an intense, exciting thrill ride, full of technical expertise, whether it’s Hollywood, espionage or travel. And he has the guts to take his lead character into situations that you will have to read to believe.

This book picks up where the first book left off, with Steven Quintana trying to track down the people who funded the kidnapping of Julia Travers in the first book. The twists are incredible. In the first book, Steven struggled to rescue Julia. In the sequel, it's Julia who must save Steven!

Awards

Six Passengers, Five Parachutes is a semi-finalist in the 2018 Los Angeles Book Pipeline Competition, which fast tracks novels to production companies for TV and film adaptation. There were ten semi-finalists out of 5,000 submissions. It also won Honorable Mention in the 2017 London Book Festival.

The Third Action-Packed Thriller

The Most Popular App in the World

Around the globe, everyone’s playing The Danger Game, the most popular storytelling app ever created. World-famous actor Julia Travers and her fiancé, Steven Quintana, are the stars of the entertainment sensation, playing fictionalized versions of themselves trapped in a hostage situation. Viewers pay to submit plotlines, hoping their ideas will be chosen for episodes where Steven and Julia must “perform or die.” With 100 million downloads and counting, fans are going crazy for this interactive series. They can’t wait to tune in to see Julia in her most exciting role to date. But the app series isn’t a fabrication. Steven and Julia really have been kidnapped, and their lives are on the line—again. Their captors plan to kill them in the final episode and disappear with a billion dollars in profit.

Back in Los Angeles, friends Carl Webb and Trishelle Hobbes know the truth. But how can they outsmart this app, especially when they don’t even know where Steven and Julia are? They enlist the help of the U.S. Army’s best cyber operation specialists and create their own rival app, The Rescue Game, dedicated to spoiling The Danger Game and discovering Julia and Steven’s location in time to save their lives.

The race is on.

Reviews for THE DANGER GAME

The Danger Game is the third installment in Ian Bull's Quintana trilogy, but my fingers are crossed for more. Like the first two, it really keeps you guessing at what could possibly happen next. The central premise is a frightening and imaginative look at what could happen when our app-based, on-demand entertainment culture is exploited by powerful, fast-buck types with a grudge. I can't recommend it highly enough for fans of tightly plotted, fast paced adventure stories. Hollywood needs to do make a series out of this!!

Sample Review from Amazon. 4.8 out of 5 stars overall.

Fans of teeth-gnashing action will enjoy The Danger Game, a perfectly plotted and twisty tale that has strong and resonant themes that contemporary readers will adore. Ian Bull’s novel is imaginative and brims with surprises. Each emotional burst, each nerve-jerking twist, and every action is delivered with breathtaking poignancy. This thrilling reality-meets-fantasy adventure moves briskly, with tense and evocative scenes, building a nuanced tale with sophisticated characters and sub-worlds. Throughout, Bull mesmerizes with his beautiful prose, keeping readers captivated with vivid descriptions and exciting dialogue, and creating characters that are lovable.

Christina Prescott, Reviewer for The Book Commentary. 5 stars.

awards

The Danger Game was named a Distinguished Favorite in the 2021 Independent Press Awards, and won the 2021 New York City Big Book Award for Best Action Adventure novel.