Police Private Investigator

This intriguing, suspense-packed novel is the fourth Jack Taggart Mystery in the series commencing with Loose Ends, Above Ground, and Angel in the Full Moon. This time the implacable Mountie Jack Taggart goes undercover to follow the trail of a cheap Saturday-night special found at the scene of a murder. He traces the gun from the manufacturer to the person it was stolen from and through several criminals, until the trail leads him to a suspected heroin importer.

There are around 40 murders per day in the United States. It's not often that they are related. On a cold night in the suburbs of Philadelphia, an attorney returns home from a long day at work only to be gunned down getting out of his car. Two hours later and 20 miles away in southern New Jersey, a truck driver is shot while making a late night delivery. When the sun rises the next morning, many more unexplained homicides plague the Tri-State area.

Gus has been hired by a man to find out if his secretary is cheating on him, even though the man is married. On top of that, the man's wife has had her half-million-dollar necklace stolen. Gus is conflicted when the wife hires him to find the necklace and tie her husband to the crime. Should he follow the cheating secretary, who may have the necklace, and turn her in?

It was time for Gus to move to a better office and out of a slum area in Detroit. Police homicide detective Bernie Longmire, and Angela, Gus' daughter, agree to help him move into his new office. Going back to the old office to get ready to move, they find a woman crying at Gus' door. She has a problem: She doesn't know where her husband is at. Did he run off with another woman or is he dead in a shallow grave? They were able to get the story from her despite all the crying she was doing, and Gus took the case.

In Waldorf Pines, ostentation and pretension are the order of the day. But even by local standards, Martha Heydrich is a stone cold pain. She's the stay-at-home wife of a very rich husband, into everybody's business and rumored to be having an affair with a local teenager, Michael Platte. One morning she seemingly vanishes, and that night her husband returns home to find the pool house ablaze. Once the fire is extinguished, police discover two bodies - one is Michael Platte and the other is presumed to be Martha....

PI John Craine is hired to investigate the brutal murder of a Somali youth. The police are treating the murder as a gang-related crime, but the victim’s aunt claims the police are trying to cover up her nephew's death. While investigating the case, Craine learns of the sudden death of his friend Leon Mercer. It appears to be a tragic accident, but Craine soon finds himself entangled in two deeply suspicious investigations.

An unidentified woman's body washes up at nearby Point Deception, immediately stirring up old feelings of fear and suspicion. Relentless in pursuing his story, and haunted by a tragedy in his own past, Newberry does not let up, instilling fear in the town's sheriff, Rhoda Swift, who fears his prying will destroy her town. But as more women die and public panic sets in, Newberry and Swift form an uneasy alliance and unite in a confrontation with a killer whose motives are not as random as they seem.

Hollywood Division detective Ben Malone is caught up in a run of bad luck. The worst of it, his unfortunate entanglement in three separate fatal on-duty shootings in less than a year at a time when activists are protesting the use of deadly force by police and provoking riots all over the country. The spate of shootings has his LAPD superiors spooked and questioning his judgment. Is Malone too quick to use deadly force?

When Bekker's old friend and state prosecutor Carly Simms wakes up next to a murdered young man in a motel room after a night of drinking, she doesn't remember a thing, especially stabbing the young man in the heart. Although all the evidence points to her guilt, Simms hires Bekker to prove her innocence. Bekker soon finds himself ensnared in a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Jake Crosby has traded in a stockbroker's suit and tie for a standard-issue uniform. As a newly minted Mississippi game warden, he has two tough cases to cut his teeth on - the ongoing robbery of wealthy hunters and the ruthless search for a rumored hidden fortune.

Beloved Burke hero Detective Dave Robicheaux returns to New Iberia to solve a series of grisly murders. Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, the death of Bernadette Latiolais, a high-school honor student, doesn’t fit: she is not the kind of hapless and marginalized victim psychopaths usually prey upon.

Twelve years ago, Chester Morton disappeared from his hometown in New York, leaving no trace and never to be heard from again. For the past twelve years, his mother has kept the search for her son alive by hounding every law enforcement agency she can get to listen. Now, Chester's body is finally found - hanging from the very billboard that has been advertising his disappearance.

When six-foot redhead ex-cop and Boston-based private investigator Carlotta Carlyle agrees to help an elderly recluse burglar-proof her apartment, the last thing she expected was that the woman would turn up dead. Now Carlotta must find out why the eccentric yet seemingly harmless Valentine Phipps isolated herself - and needed protection. Who would want to hurt Valentine? What was she hiding behind closed doors? Is there a connection between her murder and an age-old mystery that the city’s top brass - and its real-estate moguls - want to keep buried?

Not a day goes by that Father Luis Chavez isn't haunted by the cold-blooded slaying of his brother, Nicolas. But as the years pass and the case remains unsolved, there looks to be no end to his torment. When Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Story discovers a possible link between a murdered prosecutor and Nicolas's death several years before, the priest investigates, uncovering an international money-laundering scheme tying American banks to Mexican cartels.

When Father Tibor is then arrested on murder charges, it tears at the very foundation of Demarkian's world. While Gregor has very strict rules about for whom and under what conditions he will consult, all those rules go by the wayside. Demarkian is now a man possessed, and his one goal is to find out what really happened and who is really responsible for the murder Father Tibor is charged with.

Gus Mackie was relaxing in his new office in a better part of Detroit when he saw the young girl in front of his building. She was reading the sign in the window telling the world that a private investigator worked there. Gus could see she was homeless and went to open the door as she stood looking apprehensive. She finally came in and told Gus about how she wanted to find her mother who gave her up for adoption when she was a child. The girl lived on the streets most of her life and wanted a family now.

In this third of the Doyle, P.I. books, Doyle is hired by the curator of a Detroit Art Gallery. It seems nine valuable Egyptian statues were stolen from the gallery. They were replaced with fakes, and the gallery doesn't want the Egyptians to know their artifacts are missing. So Doyle and his partner Oscar Drew go on a hunt for the missing objects.

In Eastern Europe four CIA agents are dead - geopolitical pawns caught in border dispute cross fire. Why were they there? Who sent them? Not even the President knows. Back in Washington, the Secretary of the Interior dies from an apparent allergic shock. As details emerge, so do suspicions that she was murdered. Investigating their respective cases, ex - Secret Service agent Joe Reeder and FBI Special Situations Task Force leader Patti Rogers recognize a dangerous conspiracy is in play.

Halloween is a time for children to go door to door trick-or-treating. For Doyle and his girlfriend, Poppy, it's a time to catch a ghost. Poppy is investigating an insurance claim of a woman who says she was pushed down a flight of stairs by a ghost in a posh but very old hotel in Detroit. She enlists Doyle to help, and they try to get to the bottom of the claim.

In Cold Case, a decades-old missing person case turns red-hot, threatening Carlotta’s composure and a Massachusetts political race. A mysterious client comes to Carlotta secretly with a wild tale: He has obtained parts of a recently written novel by Thea Janis, the literary sensation who disappeared 24 years ago. As soon as Carlotta begins to hunt for the author, her client calls off the search. But she accidentally discovers Thea’s grave in a nearby cemetery - unearthing a tangle of lies and scandal that Boston’s most prominent citizens will do anything to suppress.