Meet Rick Acker

Rick Acker writes novels during breaks from his “real job” as a Supervising Deputy Attorney General in the California Department of Justice, where he leads a team prosecuting corporate fraud lawsuits. Publishers Weekly calls his new novel, What We Hide (coauthored with bestseller Colleen Coble), “a heart-pounding tale of stolen artifacts and murder . . . The second-chance romance adds dimension to the well-plotted whodunit, which leaves more than a few secrets to be uncovered in the next installment. Readers will be on tenterhooks.”

Rick has published eight acclaimed suspense novels, including the #1 Kindle bestseller, When the Devil Whistles. When he’s not writing, he leads investigations and lawsuits that made headlines in and out of California. For example, he and his team won a string record-breaking judgments and settlements against the Wall Street players who created the toxic mortgage securities that triggered the Great Recession. Before joining DOJ, Rick was a senior litigator at Bingham McCutchen, where he worked on high stakes litigation, including a fight between two owners of the San Francisco Forty-Niners and a multibilllion dollar international fraud case. Rick studied at the University of Oslo and has a law degree from the University of Notre Dame, where he graduated with honors. In addition to his novels, he is a contributing author on two legal treatises published by the American Bar Association.

Rick is a transplanted Chicagoan who spent thirty-five years in the Midwest before finally trading the certainty of winter and mosquitoes for the risk of earthquakes and wildfires. He now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Anette. They have four adult children.