About
len Hellman writes tragicomic thrillers—books where the joke and the gut punch land in the same paragraph, and where the narrator occasionally turns around to check whether you're still paying attention.
He is the author of the nine-book Greg Newsome series, which begins with Write to Die and runs through Turn Around & Die, Cross My Heart & Hope to Die, Due or Die, Toole & Die, Let It Die, and Time to Die. The series then does something most series don't: it outlives its protagonist, continuing into Louie the Bat: Tears of a Clown, a first-person memoir narrated by the comic relief. His short fiction includes "Are You Still There?" and "Call Me Louis." He writes in the tradition of Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, and Carl Hiaasen—crime told through voice, where what goes unsaid carries the weight.
The novels borrow from a life that supplied the material. For a decade he wrote as "Mr. Cranky," an investigative tech blogger whose reporting contributed to federal fraud prosecutions covered by the Washington Post. Before that he was a turnaround CEO and an angel investor. He is the author of Intentionality: How to Lead When You're Not in the Room, teaches at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, and coaches CEOs.
He is also a performing songwriter, which explains the rhythm problems and occasionally solves them. He lives in Oakton, Virginia.
Featured Work
Time to Die: The Cost of Mercy
Greg Newsome's martial arts expertise begins and ends with picking himself up off the ground and dusting himself off. He can't shoot straight, can't throw a punch, and he'll be the first to tell you so. For seven books, he's survived assassins, mobsters, and international conspiracies through the only skill that matters: building a team that can do the fighting for him.
His found family runs deep. Benny "The Knife" Santini, the mobster who loves him like a son. Louie "The Bat" Castellano, whose Brooklyn malapropisms hide a secret nobody sees coming. Lawrence "Sling" Slingoff, the mercenary who learns the hard way what mercy costs. And Isabelle Rossi, the former FBI agent carrying his child. They've kept him alive through everything.
Until the day the danger is finally over.
When Chinese intelligence hires Albanian assassins to erase everyone who dismantled their university espionage pipeline, Greg's network mobilizes one last time. But Greg makes the one mistake he's never made before. He thinks he's safe. He goes to buy baby gear for his unborn daughter. Alone. At a red light in the Virginia suburbs, his luck—and his team—finally run out.
What follows isn't a rescue. It's the story of everyone left behind, and whether the family a man builds can survive without the man who built it.
Funny until it isn't, Time to Die is tragicomic crime fiction for readers who want their thrillers with a beating heart—and an ending they'll never forget.
