Private Detective Fiction

When Jimmy left the force and started his "Delaney's Investigation Company", he expected to be living the life of Riley. A few months later, and the dust still hasn't had time to settle from the Preiss and Simms murders, but Jimmy's ongoing divorce has swallowed his imagined riches. What would Jimmy do without the city's thriving blackmail industry? That may go away, as candidate Mathews is promising to clean up Barnstow; but Jimmy isn't sure Mathews has the right idea.

Marcus Didius Falco discovers that rank brings problems, the most gruesome of which is a corpse buried under the tiles of his new bath house. The contractors have fled to Britain where, as the Fates have it, Falco is ordered. A local chief and ally of the Romans is having a Palace built by the Emperor Vespasian. However, the project is running late, and fatal accidents keep happening. Falco, troubleshooting for the Emperor, is without an ally and now next on the list for assassination.

Markus Novak just wants to come home. An investigator for a Florida-based death-row defense firm, Novak's life derailed when his wife, Lauren, was killed in the midst of a case the two were working together. Two years later her murderer is still at large, and Novak's attempts to learn the truth about her death through less-than-legal means and jailhouse bargaining have put his job on the line.

The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow, and is the second and final appearance of Mycroft Holmes. Doyle ranked "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" fourteenth in a list of his nineteen favourite Sherlock Holmes stories. The monotony of thick smog-shrouded London is broken by a sudden visit from Holmes' brother Mycroft.

The Adventure of the Devil's Foot is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle. It is one of eight stories in the cycle collected as His Last Bow. Doyle ranked The Adventure of the Devil's Foot ninth in his list of his twelve favorite Holmes stories. Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves at Poldhu in Cornwall one spring for the former's health, but the holiday ends with a bizarre event. Mr. Mortimer Tregennis, a local gentleman, and Mr. Roundhay, the local vicar, come to Holmes to report that Tregennis's two brothers have gone insane, and his sister has died.

Watson et Holmes au secours de la jeune fille éplorée, mais surtout face à une énigme pleine de mystères imbriqués. Mary Morstan a en effet perdu son père quelques années plus tôt mais reçoit chaque année une perle de grande beauté d'un mystérieux donateur. Et voilà que celui-ci est prêt à révéler non seulement son identité, mais aussi la raison de ses cadeaux. La rencontre tourne à la découverte d'un meurtre, et à la recherche sur les bords de la Tamise de meurtriers insaisissables.

Nero Wolfe has left his comfortable brownstone for the promise of a remarkably rare black orchid at a flower show - but before Wolfe and his perennially hardy sidekick, Archie Goodwin, have a chance to stop and smell the roses, a diabolically daring murder takes place right under their noses and puts a blight on the proceedings. Now Wolfe's fancy turns to thoughts of weeding out a murderer - one who's definitely not a garden-variety killer.

In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries. Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.

In this new installment of Ken Bruen's beloved Jack Taylor series, the whiskey-swigging Irish detective investigates a series of violent attacks on the local convent's nuns.

Flavia is enjoying the summer, spending her days punting along the river with her reluctant family. Languishing in boredom, she drags a slack hand in the water - and catches her fingers in the open mouth of a drowned corpse. Flavia needs to put her super-sleuthing skills to the test to investigate the murder of three gossips in the local church and to keep her sisters out of danger.

A man falls to his death in Western Scotland. From a distance another man watches. He approaches the body, tucks a book into the dead man's pocket, and leaves. When the Scottish police show visiting detective chief inspector Domenic Jejeune the book, he recognises it as a call for help. Back in Saltmarsh the brutal murder of a researcher has everyone looking at the man's controversial studies as a motive.

London, 1894. Albertine Honeycombe never wanted a husband and certainly not the one with fifteen children that her cousin, Aubrey, is trying to marry her off to. She reinvents herself as Countess Von Dagga, a private detective aiding the upper echelons of women in society. As the Countess, she is a married woman, with a conveniently absent husband who doesn’t exist, which allows her far more freedom than being single. When Lord Grendel, from whom she has recovered blackmail letters, is murdered, Albertine is suspect number one—having been the last person to see him.

DS Lucas Walker is off duty. He's supposed to be showing his little sister Grace the Australian outback, on her visit from Boston, but instead they're headed out bush- where Walker's cousin has been mining for boulder opal. Something seemed off when Walker heard that Blair wanted to get out of Kanpara, so he and Grace are en route to bring him home to Caloodie. But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and a major flood is on the way.

Pretty Amy Denovo wants to find the father she has never seen, but she can't afford Nero Wolfe's outlandish fees...or can she? Suddenly, she's knocking on the detective's door with a parcel full of bills in hand - and a quarter of a million hidden in her closet. It's all part of a nest egg left by her unknown father. But when Wolfe and his able assistant, Archie Goodwin, begin to trace the money to the man, they make a startling discovery: Amy's father murdered her mother, and now he may be after her.

Always a good sport, Jim McGill, the first private eye to live in the White House, agrees to accompany his wife, the president, to London to be her escort at a dinner given by the queen. Problem is he'll have a week in England with nothing to do. Then a client comes to McGill, the daughter of a former Chicago cop McGill knew but didn't like when he was a captain on the CPD. McGill's former colleague went to Paris to scatter the ashes of his late wife. While tending to that solemn obligation, the former cop managed to get into a brawl with and kill France's national sports hero.

In Poirot Investigates, Agatha Christie presents eleven riveting short stories featuring the famous Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. From high-stakes jewel thefts to baffling murders, Poirot faces a variety of complex and puzzling cases that challenge his remarkable intellect and investigative prowess. In these tales, Poirot must unravel a web of deception involving missing persons, secret identities, and shocking crimes, using his keen observation and logical deductions to reveal the truth.

A bomb explodes in the desk drawer of a top TV executive. Was it intended for him or the man who opened the drawer? They each had enemies enough to die a dozen times over. Was it the jealous wife or the ambitious partner? The secretary who got passed around like an inter-office memo? Or the man who couldn’t wash the blood off his hands? Nero Wolfe didn’t want any part of it - but he was up to his neck in the toughest case of his career!

Kathryn Walker enjoys an enviable life. Her husband is an accomplished doctor, her children are bright and successful, and she devotes herself to charity work that uplifts her Suburban Colorado community. Settling into a new year, her life couldn’t be better. . . Until April.

The residents of Alaska’s largest national park are stunned by the death of one of their oldest members, 87-year-old Old Sam Dementieff...even private investigator Kate Shugak. Sam, a lifelong resident, dubbed the “father” of all of the Park rats - even though he had no children of his own - was especially close to Kate, his niece, but even she is surprised to discover that in his will he’s left her everything, including a letter instructing her simply to, “find my father".

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense - the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.