Crime novels. Memoir. Humor.
Because people are endlessly fascinating, life is wonderfully imperfect, and there's almost always something to laugh about.
Retired FBI Special Agent writing crime novels, memoir, and essays.
Meet Shayne
For more than two decades, I worked as an FBI Special Agent, where I learned that people are endlessly fascinating. The job gave me extraordinary stories. Life gave me the rest.
Today I write crime novels, memoir, and essays because I'm still fascinated by people. Their resilience. Their contradictions. Their unexpected turns. And the wonderfully imperfect business of being human.
Some stories make us think.
Some make us laugh.
My favorites do both.
There… Go I.
In Progress
I thought I was writing a memoir about twenty years as an FBI Special Agent — interrogation rooms, firearms quals, learning to read people who thought they weren't readable.
It turned out to be about the second chance that almost didn't happen at Quantico, the motherhood I was terrified I was failing in real time, two divorces I didn't see coming, and the slow, unglamorous work of becoming the person I was always going to have to become anyway.
Molting
Crime Novel • Seeking Representation
When a Baltimore venture capitalist's drug arrest looks too convenient to be an accident, the founder of a firm that doesn't repair reputations — it decides whether they deserve saving — uncovers a corruption scheme reaching into the city's harbor and its halls of power.
A literary crime novel about complicity, resilience, and the question at the center of every story built to survive: it's not what the truth costs. It's who pays for it.
Writing Projects
Fighting Grace
In Progress
Grace Rosaland has never fit the mold of an FBI fugitive hunter — and she's stopped trying to.
When a squad-car accident forces her longtime partner into early retirement, Grace is stuck with the detective responsible for it: Julie Marcone, gruff, street-smart, and carrying a reputation problem of her own. Neither of them wanted this partnership. But when a fugitive case turns into a serial killer investigation with implications neither woman saw coming, the two who can barely stand each other may be the only ones who can stop it.
Writing.
Then life intervened
Personal Essays
He Was Ours Sometimes the people who shape our lives never learn our names. Read on LinkedIn
Latest
August 2026
Launched shaynebuchwaldnickoles.com.
Upcoming
Guest on FedChicks.
Featured on FBI Case File Review.
Contact
I'd love to hear from you.
Whether you're interested in my writing, would like to discuss a podcast, speaking engagement, or other collaboration, just reach out.
shaynebnickoles@gmail.com
You can also find me on:
• LinkedIn: Shayne Buchwald-Nickoles | LinkedIn
• Substack: Shayne Buchwald | Substack
• Medium: Shayne Buchwald – Medium