Keith E Bombard

Keith E. Bombard

- Schooled in New England at Loomis School, Bowdoin College, and Harvard Business School

- Early professional career in Banking in NYC and Hartford, CT

- Later years focused on I/T Consulting and Systems Architecture: systems and database development in the health services industry.

- The author of 2 books: TobaccoNet and The Red-Hooded League published in Amazon's CreateSpace & Kindle and for Nook.

- He and his family reside in South Carolina.

Here is the published Kirkus Review of TobaccoNet:

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this debut thriller launching a new series, an undercover drug enforcement agent becomes embroiled in shady dealings in the tobacco industry.

Pot is the new tobacco. Hardly anybody knows this better than the greedy folks at Connecticut’s Treadwell Farms, where efforts are secretly underway to somehow cash in on the hot ticket that is marijuana. Marco Pinto, a scientist at the farm, busily spends his waking hours manipulating a new strain of tobacco with THC, the compound in marijuana that delivers the high. Since tobacco farms are already outfitted to work with what was once a booming cash crop, having a similar product become the new darling will work in their favor. There’s only one slight problem: marijuana is still illegal in most of the country, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, in the form of Jason Kraft, must make sure this genetic hybrid doesn’t surface on the streets. Complicating Kraft’s mission is the gorgeous Alondra Espinoza, a Puerto Rican native who packs a mean punch under that Miss Congeniality exterior. Espinoza is an FBI agent assigned to the case by bosses convinced that the DEA is not doing its job. What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase between different characters with conflicting interests in a plot that is tightly paced, if occasionally confusing. Bombard reveals the unfair labor practices in Connecticut’s tobacco industry—operations with no unions, no health benefits, deficient working conditions, and poor pay but which remain legal. It’s difficult to reconcile the land of hedge fund managers, one of the richest states in the U.S., with this kind of inequity. Unfortunately, Kraft’s romantic relationship with the beautiful Espinoza becomes a distraction at times, especially since it stalls the story frequently. And the many twists and turns may confound inattentive readers. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of action and fun to keep devoted fans of the thriller/spy genre satisfied.

A fast-paced DEA tale with a social conscience that should have many readers looking forward to more of Jason Kraft.

Here is the KIRKUS REVIEW of The Red-Hooded League:

This second installment of a series finds a New England prep school rocked by heroin overdoses.

The Moonus Dawkins School is an elite prep school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Within 10 days, however, two senior students have died of drug overdoses: Mitchel Young, a popular academic ace, and Ron Eastwood, a talented musician and loner. Enter Drug Enforcement Administration agent Jason Kraft, who’s been covertly inserted into Dawkins as a teacher. His class is “Social Media in the Digital Age,” and both deceased students had been attending before his arrival. Helping Kraft is Alondra Espinoza, a vacationing FBI agent—and his fiancee. The probe immediately adopts a surreal flavor when Molly Stark, from the DEA’s media unit, subjects Kraft to an interview aimed at dissecting his current case for the purpose of training new recruits. She insists on knowing the vital details of the inquiry and Kraft’s methodology, which doesn’t sit well with him. Kraft also teams up with David Ellinghood, a local detective, and befriends professor Jim Soulmer. The investigation soon reveals that Mitchel, a dedicated pilot-in-training, would not be able to get his flier’s license, and he and his girlfriend, Hillary Barrymore, had been going through a rough patch. Then, an interview with Mitchel’s roommate, BJ McGee, suggests that the teen may have been murdered. In this literary thriller, Bombard (TobaccoNet, 2015) delivers an ode to the immortal Sherlock Holmes and the 1891 Arthur Conan Doyle short story “The Red-Headed League.” The Mind and Bones secret society, a system of underground tunnels, and the rumors of flight school hazing add touches of New England noir to picturesque Stockbridge. The author also does a superb job of rotating his multifaceted characters in and out of suspicion (the eloquent Soulmer, for example, convinces a drug dealer that he needs “some pure heaven man”). As Kraft delves further into the complex case, he’s reminded that “we were often struggling with competing good and bad influences in life.” Best of all: more suspicious deaths throughout the narrative keep the tension ratcheted high.

A meticulously arranged mystery in which technology and classic literature collide.