Justin Scott

Justin Scott is the author of thirty-eight thrillers, mysteries and sea stories including The Man Who Loved The Normandie, Rampage, and The Shipkiller, which the International Thriller Writers lists in Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads.

Born in Manhattan July 20, 1944, he grew up on Long Island’s Great South Bay in a family of professional writers. His father, A. Leslie Scott, wrote Westerns and poetry. His mother, Lily K. Scott, wrote novels and short stories for slicks and pulps. His sister, Alison Scott Skelton, is a novelist, as was her late husband, C.L. Skelton.

The Mystery Writers of America nominated Scott for Edgar Allan Poe awards for Best First Novel (1974)and Best Short Story (1994). He has been a member of the Authors League, the Adams Round Table and, for thirty-five years, The Players. He is an Eagle Scout.

Scott holds Bachelors and Masters in history, (B.A. Harpur College, 1966; Two-year M.A. State University of New York at Binghamton, 1969). Before becoming a writer, he drove boats and trucks, built Fire Island beach houses, edited an electronic engineering journal, and tended bar in a Hell’s Kitchen saloon.

He writes the Ben Abbott detective series about a small-town Connecticut real estate agent, and collaborated with Clive Cussler on nine Isaac Bell detective adventure series thrillers set in Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era, three of which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List.

PAUL GARRISON is his main pen name under which he writes modern sea stories and an occasional thriller based on a Robert Ludlum character.

Scott lives in Connecticut with his wife, filmmaker Amber Edwards, with whom he collaborated on a 2021 thriller published by the University of Louisiana Press—Forty Days and Forty Nights by Amber Edwards & Justin Scott.

His latest book, just emerging from the computer, is an Elizabethan historical novel, Treason’s Playwright.