Amateur Detective

Will Agaton Sax be able to tell the criminals from their doubles? And will he get to the bottom of this curious mystery? He hasn't failed to crack a case yet, but there's always a first time....

A top-secret experiment at a restricted virtual-reality compound pulls attorney Tommy Diaz back into the orbit of Irene Adler, an old friend with an eidetic memory, a love of true-crime podcasts, and a knack for solving the unsolvable. But this? At a remote warehouse, a VR trial goes awry when a willing test subject, alone in the observation room, drops dead of anaphylaxis—from the sting of a virtual bee.

What looks more impressive on a resume? Nosy amateur sleuth or struggling no-name actress? Neither one pays the bills, and Becky Robinson has a lot of bills. So, when she's invited to the reading of her rich uncle Al's will, she daydreams about her inheritance. The problem, Becky doesn't have an uncle Al. And she never met the deceased. The mysterious stranger leaves her a ceramic flamingo with a hidden message. Turns out her fake uncle was murdered, and she was hired from the grave to find whodunit.

Welcome to Willieville is a novelette set in 1998 about a high school graduate, Willie, whose friend is murdered while they party on a warm Friday night, out behind the 7-Eleven. He's in a suburb north of Detroit where the primary mission of the police is to keep things just the way they are. Willie, nearly killed in the attack that took his friend's life, didn't see who did it, so the police have little to go on, and assume that it was a drug deal gone bad. Forced to investigate on his own, Willie makes a terrible discovery about the murderer.

Who would steal a little girl's dog, right before Christmas? After seeing young Sophie's heartbreaking story on the news, P.I. Geri Sullivan and Pepe - her talking Chihuahua - vow to rescue this bonita canine named Chiquita. But tracking the pooch's scent through a Pacific Northwest winter wonderland isn't easy, especially when the trail leads to an elf who's been mortally mauled! Geri and Pepe must save little Sophie's Christmas and find this muy naughty dognapper...

es and Watson investigate spies and amateur beggars in this thrilling addition to the Sherlock Holmes mythos, based on one of the unpublished tales mentioned in the original series.