Crime City

Struggling to forget a crumbling marriage, 40-year-old Anna Lucia Lottol comes to Venice to visit an old friend - but instead of finding solace, she is dragged into the police station and accused of murdering a money-laundering count with whom she had a brief affair. A US Treasury officer with brains and athleticism, Anna fights to clear her name in a seductive city full of watery illusions. As she works to pry information from a cast of recalcitrant characters sometimes denying what she sees and hears, she succeeds in unleashing a powerful foe bent on destroying her.

A delicious account of a murder most gallic - think CSI Paris meets Georges Simenon - whose lurid comibation of sex, brutality, forensics, and hypnotism riveted first a nation and then the world. Little Demon in the City of Light is the thrilling - and so wonderfully French - story of a gruesome 1889 murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man and his pliant mistress and the international manhunt, sensational trial, and an inquiry into the limits of hypnotic power that ensued.

Emerson Waverly and Detective Jennifer Milner have much more in common than one would believe. Both of them are stuck in the city of Toledo, Ohio, living a life that neither of them want as single women. However, Emerson doesn't want to be a single woman; she wants her boyfriend, Xavior, back. Detective Milner is a single mom trying to raise her teenage daughter on her own, and to navigate a new reality when her daughter's father shows up after 10 years. Her life begins to spiral down further when a secret affair with her captain becomes public knowledge among her fellow officers.

Luke Mbeki has never been a fan of politics. His family knows this about him. As well as his friends. Even his colleagues are privy to this fact. He is therefore left bewildered when he finds himself in the middle of not one, but two cases that involve opposing political parties. When he is coerced into pledging his allegiance to one political campaign after the murder of a prominent person on their team, he knows he's definitely bitten off more than he can chew.

Railway cop and former Marine Sydney Parnell is on the hunt. So is a killer she knows only as the Alpha. They’re in a race to find Malik, an 11-year-old Iraqi boy with secrets to guard. Sydney wants to help him. The Alpha wants him dead. From the dark alleys of Mexico City to the mean streets of Denver, Sydney and her K9 partner, Clyde, use their wits and determination to chase down the ruthless killer. But when their path collides with his, Sydney realizes just how far-reaching and sinister the Alpha’s past is. And how far he’s willing to go to save his secrets.

Syracuse, upstate New York. The “Salt City”. An apartment building on the edge of The Projects - and Anne Malloy dies, flying out of a sixth floor window, an apparent suicide, while Mark Cornell watches. Mark was there for a purpose, his part-time gig being to snap incriminating photos for a divorce lawyer who happily takes cases over the phone. Watching the apartment was Mark’s assignment. But this assignment has a problem.

It's Mardi Gras season in post-Katrina New Orleans. City officials expect record crowds and the biggest boost to the Crescent City economy since the big storm. Alexandra Lee Destephano, legal counsel for Crescent City Medical Center, is anticipating her third Mardi Gras season and her date with Mitch Landry to the biggest Mardi Gras ball in New Orleans. But hold on. Alex is stat-paged to the hospital and learns from her boss and former husband that the wife of the governor of Louisiana has been found unconscious and covered in blood in her hospital room.

It's early 1944 and Richmond, Virginia is a devil's paradise. Ration scams and police corruption are rampant while the inflated black market commands top dollar. Detective Sergeant Bennie Sherwood, fresh off a soul-scarring tour of duty with the Marines, couldn't care less. His old man was recently murdered under suspect circumstances, and he's on a hunt for the truth. But then an old friend is killed during a botched black market raid and Bennie is thrust onto a hellride through Richmond's underworld.

It's August in New York, and the steaming garbage littering the streets isn't the only thing that stinks. Civilian investigator Leonard Mitchell can keep his job as the new head of the Department to Investigate Misconduct and Corruption only by successfully prosecuting veteran cop Ralph Mulino.

Marla Bernstein is a pretty, dark-haired teenager who also happens to be the ward of Ben Morningstar - a semi-retired mobster who prefers to keep family business out of the newspapers. When Marla suddenly disappears, the gang boss is forced to call in private eve Amos Walker, who quickly learns his new employer doesn't take "no" for an answer when he offers a job opportunity. Unfortunately, the only clue to Marla's whereabouts is a pornographic photograph that clearly proves that she's become part of a world that disgusts even her criminal guardian....

A self-labeled enigma, Detective Inspector Jack Austin is at once miserable and amusing, melancholy, and motivated. Running the Community Police Unit from his deck chair, DI Austin is known for his ability to solve crimes out of the blue. Trying to work cases while struggling with his mental issues, Austin deals with a variety of major crimes, including bicycle theft.

The ultimate collection of Australia's craziest cons and mad schemes from a master storyteller. Australia is the birthplace and setting of some of the wildest, craziest and least-likely-to-succeed cons and rorts in history. From the cleverest double-crosses to the most unlikely and maddest schemes, master storyteller Jim Haynes reminds us that we've never been shy of pulling a trick or two.

Stacy Horn sheds light on the dark world of the NYPD’s real-life Cold Case Squad—a special command of detectives who take on the homicide cases that remain unsolved after their initial period of investigation. Those who comprise its ranks are often characterized as misfits and lone wolves—but brilliant ones, to be sure. Here, their fascinating and deeply troubling stories of cases closed—and others that remain open—are conveyed in chilling detail.

Behind every fortune is a crime. Yet for young Philly Mob boss "Little Vinny" Veccuto in the 1980s, his crimes were his passion. Centralizing his business in the back of a steak shop in Ducktown, Atlantic City, Vinny illegally reaps the riches of early casino construction. After he becomes "King of the Jersey Shore", Vinny sees his success put to the test between unbearable federal investigation, a violent drug war erupting in his own inner circle, and those closest to him in one way or another, turning their back to him.

Aaron Iturra was just 18 years old when he was found dead in his bedroom in Eugene, Oregon. Soon, the quiet community would be rocked and shocked by who was behind the killing: Mary Louise Thompson, also known as Gang Mom. An anti-gang activist, she was a modern day deadly Fagin, running her own gang of juveniles who preyed on the unsuspecting city.

This book does fall into the same universe as my other series of books I call the Noir series. In those books you can hear about the gritty world of detectives, reporters, and gangsters. Well, that world exists here as well except here you have men and women who are willing to work outside of the law on both sides to get a job done. Whereas the other books focus on the aforementioned detectives, private and otherwise, here the focus is more on the ones that hide who they are.

Herb Bean watches a lot of television, mostly cop shows and Forensic Files. Now his wife has disappeared without a trace. Herb knows the husband is always the prime suspect. Where do you turn when you are afraid to turn to the police?

Erma Johnson lives in a rough part of Baltimore. Gangs are a fact of life. She lost her daughter and grandson to their violence. She's convinced, however, that her grandson wasn't in a gang. Hacker turned private investigator C.T. Ferguson takes her case. The more he looks around, the more he thinks she's right.

Jamie Gabriel gets on his bike before dawn to deliver newspapers in his suburban Indianapolis neighborhood. He is 12 years old. Somewhere en route, he vanishes without a trace. Crushed by frustrating dead ends and exhausted by a police force that cannot (or will not) find their son, the Gabriels finally stumble upon a name - an elusive private investigator who may represent their last chance for answers.

Willie Bledsoe, once an idealistic young black activist, is now a burnt-out case. After leaving a snug berth at Tuskegee Institute to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he has become bitterly disillusioned with the civil rights movement and its leaders. He returns home to Alabama to try to write a memoir about his time in the cultural whirlwind, but the words fail to come. The surprise return of his Vietnam veteran brother in the spring of 1967 gives Willie a chance to drive a load of smuggled guns to the Motor City....