R. Lawson Gamble is an award-winning and bestselling mystery author, best known for his "Zack Tolliver, FBI" series of novels. Gamble was born and raised in New Jersey, near the border with New York. He grew up in a family of musicians and readers and pursued a career in music, earning a bachelor's degree in the field. He went on to become a professional singer in Providence, Rhode Island, and Boston, Massachusetts, where he performed opera and oratorio. Later, he worked at a private school in Boston as the Music Chairperson, taking on additional responsibilities as Dean of Students and Soccer coach. After more than three decades at the school, Gamble moved to California in 2009 to pursue his dream of becoming a fiction author.
Gamble currently resides in Los Alamos on California's Central Coast, where he writes and explores the area's wine and ale offerings, runs trails, and tells tales. In addition to his "Zack Tolliver, FBI" series, he has published more than ten fiction works and a historical work on the Los Alamos Valley. His expertise as a historian has led to appearances as a speaker and participation in documentary films. One of his notable projects was researching Salomon Pico, a local bandit, which resulted in him being featured in a documentary on the real-life Zorro.
The "Zack Tolliver, FBI" series is a collection of crime mystery fiction novels that have won several awards, including Gold, Silver, and Bronze from the Readers' Favorite International Book Awards. The protagonists, Zack Tolliver and Eagle Feather, appear in every story and are faced with new crimes, mysteries, and settings in each novel. These intriguing environments feature varied cultures, history, and political undercurrents, which present unique challenges to solving the mysteries. The series also incorporates well-researched history, actual topographical features, Native American cultures and myths, and an element of mysticism and the paranormal. In addition to the "Zack Tolliver, FBI" series, Gamble has also published a Western series, "Johnny Alias," which is currently three books in length.