RETIRED DETECTIVE
Bill McDonough
37 years in law enforcement and counterterrorism. 9 years on the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. A STEMI survivor who picked up a pen when the sirens faded.
Now writing from South Carolina, the stories that kept him up at night, and the ones that got him through the day.
About Bill
Bill McDonough spent 37 years in law enforcement, working patrol, numerous detective assignments, Hostage Rescue Team, and intelligence. He was one of the first officers assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force after September 11, serving nine years in counterterrorism and undercover operations.
A STEMI survivor who walked into the ER on his own and survived, Bill relocated to South Carolina and transitioned to insider threat work at a major tech company. He now also consults with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office Cold Case Unit.
His writing voice is the same one that carried him through three decades of the worst days imaginable: believable first, authentic always, trust earned never assumed.
Why He Writes
After 37 years of sirens, search warrants, and sitting across from people who did terrible things, Bill writes because the stories demanded to be told, not sanitized, not dramatized, but told the way they actually happened.
He writes for the public who deserves to know what really happens behind the badge, and for the men and women still out there who might see themselves in these pages and know they’re not alone.
The Writing
Published • Available Now
After the Adrenaline
A recovery and longevity protocol for first responders, veterans, and anyone who’s lived on adrenaline for too long. Part field manual, part survival story, 30 years on the job distilled into what actually works when the uniform comes off.
Completed Manuscript
The Memoir
68,000 words. A family history of service anchored by a 1945 U.S. Navy dog tag issued to Bill’s 17-year-old father. From the streets of St. Louis through homicide cases featured on Netflix’s I Am a Killer and A&E’s Undercover: Caught on Tape, through 9/11 and the JTTF, across Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa, and it’s still moving.
In Progress
The Thriller
A commercial fiction thriller built on real FBI JTTF tradecraft. A Task Force Officer in Chicago stumbles into a pipeline of looted antiquities from the Kuwait National Museum, artifacts that disappeared during the Gulf War and never stopped moving. The kind of story only someone who lived it could write.
The Line
In 1945, the U.S. Navy issued a dog tag to a 17-year-old kid from St. Louis. That kid was Bill’s father. The dog tag was carried through Bill’s police career, through his children’s deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa, and through 30 years of service that started the day Bill pinned on a badge.
Today it rests with his youngest daughter, a firefighter in South Carolina. Eighty years of American service, one thin piece of metal.
The line doesn’t break. It just finds the next hand.
Bill McDonough | Author 