About this website. This website offers a selection of the writings of brothers George A. Platz and Richard S. Platz, and will include novels, short stories, and nonfiction. (Please note: The writings on this web site are provided solely for personal reading by visitors to the site. They may be copied or downloaded for that purpose only. They may not be distributed to other persons, altered in any way, or used for any other purpose without the express written consent of the authors, who reserve all rights in such works.) Comments, questions and licensing inquiries are welcome. Send them to: Platz Brothers, P.O. Box 797, Blue Lake, CA 95525.

About the Platz Brothers.

George A. Platz practiced law in Chicago from 1964 to 2002. He received his B.S. degree from Northwestern University in 1960 and his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1963, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He is currently retired and spends his time at his farm in southwestern Michigan, his home near Chicago, and his winter residence in Thatcher, Arizona.

Richard S. Platz has retired from the practice of law in Humboldt County, California. Rick received his B.A. degree in philosophy from Northwestern University in 1964. In 1967 he received his JD degree from the University of California at Berkeley, serving as an associate editor of the California Law Review. After practicing law in Berkeley and Oakland, Rick spent two years in Mexico, near Guadalajara. In 1977 he established his sole general practice in Blue Lake, a rural town in Northern California with a population of 1200, where he served as City Attorney for more than 32 years. Besides writing, his interests include backpacking, garden railroading, and playing a little basketball.

Click on a title to read a sample of the Platz Brothers' works:

The Sugarwood Papers is a collection of George's essays on buying a farm and becoming an amateur surveyor, woodcutter, bridge builder, and maple syrup maker. It also includes a gallery of his wife Andrea's farm-related block prints.

In Pursuit of the Elegant Trogon is Rick's account of the brother's search for the rare and colorful Elegant Trogon in the canyons of Southeast Arizona.

Timestop One fine day some twenty years ago, as the Platz Brothers were motoring serenely around the southern tip of Lake Michigan toward Sugarwood Farm, and apropos of nothing in particular, George posed the following question, "If time travel is possible, then why don't we encounter anyone from the future?" Timestop is Rick's response.

Backpacking in Jefferson contains Rick's accounts of backpacking and dayhiking. While not intended as a guidebook, they do nonetheless contain photographs and data about trails, access to trailheads, and the location of good campsites that hikers may find of use. Located in the mountainous border region of northern California and southern Oregon, the State of Jefferson is more a state of mind than a political reality. But here lie plentiful wilderness areas and undesignated wildlands. This is a work in progress.

For information about the Platz Brothers' novels available on Amazon, click on a title below:

Acquired Characteristics is George's short novel about Russian journalist Leo Krakin, who pursues an unusual second job in an unlikely time and place--as a private investigator in the Soviet Union of the early 1960s. He takes on a seemingly simple task of finding a professor's missing manuscript that draws him and his girlfriend Anya into a complex plot involving a murder and an audacious Cold War deception concerning weapons of mass destruction. In the course of his investigation, Krakin must deal with the KGB, the Soviet Academy of Science and its director T. D. Lysenko, the Soviet Army, a black market entrepreneur, a mysterious American agent and a wealthy American publisher, and a key Soviet government leader. Krakin evades one threat after another, only to face a choice that, if he survives, will determine the course of the rest of his life. Acquired Characterstics is now available for purchase on Amazon.com in a deluxe trade paperback or Kindle edition.

Hawk Island is George's imaginative novel set in a world dominated by a democratic government obsessed with equality and respect for human rights and indigenous cultures. It follows the lives of a frontiersman who becomes a revered protector of native tribes, an idealistic government leader who is deeply concerned about the treatment of a racial minority of which he is a member, a foreign despot who fiercely defends his homeland's rigid class structure, and others who are destined to play a role in an unexpected threat to that democratic government from outside its borders. Strong characters, political intrigue, crucial battles, and threats of nuclear devastation combine in a drama that deals with universal issues of egalitarianism, pacifism, racism, and cultural conflict. Hawk Island is now available for purchase on Amazon.com in a deluxe trade paperback edition.

Project Divine Wind is Rick's cybernetic courtroom thriller flavored with mystery and romance. Attorney Jed LeBaron's representation of a young black man accused of simple burglary leads him to the federal courts for a determination of whether a self-aware machine, a synthesis of genetic engineering and computer science, is entitled to the basic civil rights of a human being. LeBaron studied in Berkeley in the mid-Sixties and came away with a law degree. But what next? Returning from a long stay under the Mexican sun, he finds employment representing criminal defendants in the down and dirty neighborhoods of Oakland. His employer, Cedrick P. Collins, Esq., is a former longshoreman who earned his law degree from correspondence school and is now the most charismatic, elegantly dressed, and silver tongued African American criminal defense lawyer in the Bay Area. Law school never prepared LeBaron for coping with Collins' streetwise clients. This novel contains a realistic look at the underside of the legal justice system based on the author's own experience. 335 pages.

Of Magic and Delusion is Rick's third novel. The young Crown Prince is not happy. The darling of the realm, he is a product of an age of plenty in a kingdom protected by the Sorcerer's magic from savage barbarians at the borders. The Prince is representative of his generation, only somehow more so, as if painted in vivid colors by a more passionate hand. One would suppose him content. But inside he rages after the elusive goal of perfection and is ravaged by unquenchable desire. Neither philosophy nor faith can satisfy his longing. He turns to the Sorcerer for mastery of the magical. But here there is no real magic, only madness. Or to put it another way, there is only the magic of the everyday world, and all attempts to suborn it are madness. The result is a brutally honest coming-of-age novel, built from the bricks and mortar of real life. Through romance, adventure, humor, and a smattering of philosophy, Of Magic and Delusion explores hope, love, obsession, addiction, and self-delusion. Suitable for mature young adults prepared to face the truth. 150 pages.

Apointment at Angahuan was co-authored by Rick and James A. Kline. It is a contemporary novel of adventure, suspense, and international intrigue. Three young Americans are unwittingly drawn into the maelstrom of Presidential politics in Mexico as the Tarascan Indian people try to break the stranglehold of the conservative PRI party. Psychologist Dr. Jeff Rivers and Archaeologist Shimoko Johanson, in search of an ancient Tarascan treasure, and attorney Jed LeBaron, a pawn in a political game, are thrown together in the lava tubes beneath the re-awakening Paricutin volcano, the headquarters of the shadowy leader of the secretive Ninos del Tecolote. Completed in 1982, this novel foreshadows by a decade the violent indigenous uprisings in the State of Chiapas, Mexico, and the drug cartel and weapons wars of today. Co-author James A. Kline is a retired psychologist currently living in southwest Colorado. He has traveled extensively in Mexico. 300 pages.

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You can read more of Rick's work at the following website: