Supreme JusticeMy name is Joe Reeder. My closer friends tend to call me “Peep,” but “Joe” will do just fine. I like to think I’m a normal guy, by the standards of the late 2020s, anyway. These days I’m a business man, but my background is law enforcement. My Washington, D.C.-based security company has been a bigger success than I expected. I studied Kinesics, the science of “reading” people for my prior job, and that skill has transferred nicely into my new career.

A typical day for me begins with a long walk through Arlington National Cemetery. It’s a place where I can find peaceful solitude among those who came before me. I’m allowed into the cemetery before the daily rush of the tourists because once upon a time I took a bullet for the President of the United States. That was during the prior job I referred, as a Secret Service agent on protection detail for POTUS. Generally, I don’t talk about that part of my life, since it’s ancient history, and also I didn’t leave the Secret Service under the best of conditions.

For the most part, I avoid politics altogether. The country has changed even since the mid-2010s, and I’m not sure for the better, but that’s likely just the kvetching of a middle-aged man longing for an earlier, easier time. But I do I want the world to be a better place for my daughter Amy. She’s a freshman at Georgetown University who I don’t see enough, especially since her mother and I divorced.

Beyond work, my social life boils down mostly to the occasional beer with a friend at some sporting event or in front a TV broadcasting one. In the past that was often with my best friend Gabe Sloan, but it’s been a while since we sat down together like that. Since the death of his daughter, Kathy, Amy’s best friend, he has kept more to himself, burying his grief in work.

I haven’t seen him in so long that I haven’t even met his new partner yet. Her name is Patti Rogers and they’ve been working together for a while, and I hear good things. She sounds like a real pro, but we still aren’t acquainted. I get the feeling we will be soon…very soon.


Joe Reeder appears in the thriller Supreme Justice by Max Allan Collins (with help from Matthew Clemens) which was released on July 1, 2014.

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Meet the authors
Max Allan Collins is the author of the Shamus-winning Nathan Heller historicals (Ask Not) and the graphic novel Road to Perdition, basis for the Academy Award-winning film. His innovative ‘70s series, Quarry, has been revived by Hard Case Crime (The Wrong Quarry) and he has completed eight posthumous Mickey Spillane novels (King of the Weeds) Collins wrote and directed the Lifetime movie Mommy and the documentary Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane on Criterion’s edition of Kiss Me Deadly.  Visit Max at his website or on Facebook.

Matthew Clemens is a long-time co-conspirator with Max Allan Collins. The pair has collaborated on over twenty novels, several comic books, four graphic novels, a computer game, and a dozen mystery jigsaw puzzles.  Visit Matthew on Facebook.


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