Cole Maddox
Cole Maddox writes crime fiction. His debut series, The Decker Files, is set in Philadelphia: a city he knows the way Decker knows a case file. By its silences as much as its details.
The Decker Files began with a simple question: what happens when a good detective works the right case at the wrong time, gets it wrong, and has to live with that? Not a corrupt cop. Not a dirty one. Just a man who missed something twenty years ago and never stopped knowing it.
That question became Jake Decker. Decker became a series.
On Philadelphia
Philadelphia is not a backdrop. It is a participant. The neighborhoods remember things the official record does not. South Philly, Kensington, the corridors between City Hall and the river: these places have their own logic, their own loyalties, their own way of keeping score.
Decker works in that city. He was shaped by it. The cases he catches are its cases: the ones that fall between jurisdictions, between administrations, between what happened and what got written down.
On the Work
Every Decker Files novel is built around a single principle borrowed from the craft tradition of Dwight V. Swain: every scene moves. Every moment of action produces a consequence. Every consequence forces a decision. There is no filler. There is no padding. There is only what Decker does next and what it costs him.
If you finish a chapter and immediately open the next one, the book is working.
Cole Maddox is a pen name. The author does not make public appearances or conduct interviews at this time. For rights inquiries, reader mail, or press contact, use the contact form.
Start before Book One.
The free prequel short story is the only place to read the case Decker worked before the series begins, the one he closed without solving. Exclusive to subscribers.
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