Private Detective Fiction

Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye.... He quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He's a literate, wisecracking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up.

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride - these are cases so fiendishly complex that only Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate.

Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

Lorsque la richissime Emily Inglethorp est retrouvée empoisonnée dans son manoir de Styles, les soupçons se portent rapidement sur son très jeune mari, Alfred Inglethorp. Mais le verdict paraît trop évident au colonel Hastings, qui décide de faire appel à son vieux compagnon Hercule Poirot. Ce dernier met alors tout en œuvre pour découvrir à qui pourrait profiter le crime. Car il y a aussi les beaux-enfants de Mme Inglethorp, et Cynthia, la protégée de la défunte : tous auraient pu se procurer la strychnine qui a servi à la tuer.

Even though Agatha Raisin loathes amateur dramatics, her friend Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife, has persuaded her to support the local pantomime. Stifling a yawn at the production of Babes in the Woods, Agatha watches as the baker, playing an ogre, struts and threatens on the stage. Then a trapdoor opens… followed by a scream and then silence. Surely, this isn't the way the scene was rehearsed?

The story is not your typical murder mystery. The sleuth is not a detective, private eye, or lawyer. He's an ordinary guy with an extraordinary dog. Jacob Martin is trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o'clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for the murder of her fourth husband, and his father is near death. Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks.

After getting canned from the Seattle PD, brilliant, wisecracking Thomas Prescott follows his sister Lacy to Philadelphia, where she swims on the Drexel University team. While Thomas’s slapstick antics mask a keen analytic mind, it’s his nose for trouble that leads him again and again into dicey situations. The ex–homicide detective is not long in Philly before getting caught up in two high-powered criminal cases. Thomas stumbles into a crime scene amid the Occupy Philadelphia protests. Activist Brooke Wexley has been strangled within sight of city hall.

Adrian Monk is horrified when he learns there's going to be a blue flu in San Francisco. He doesn't understand what the blue flu is - but it sounds terrible. Captain Stottlemeyer explains that it's not really a virus: the police force plan to call in "sick" until they get a better contract. The good news is that the labor dispute will give Monk a chance to get back on the force. The bad news is, it means he'll be a "scab" - and he doesn't like the sound of that, either.

In Amsterdam, four bodies, violently butchered, are discovered in a canal house, the remains of friends and confidantes of the assassin known only as Louis. The men responsible for the murders are Serbian war criminals. They believe they can escape retribution by retreating to their homeland. They are wrong. For Louis has come to Europe to hunt them down: five killers to be found and punished before they can vanish into thin air.

Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating. Two days later she was dead, the victim of murder.

In this dual collection of short stories, Alexander McCall Smith brings his trademark humor and warmth to inventive tales of spying and vengeance. In one story, a spy dropped deep into enemy territory manages to disguise himself—quite convincingly—as a nun. In another, an invitation to join the Vatican Secret Service sends a prospective operative down a rabbit hole of controversy and confusion. A third story finds an author, on the brink of public ruin, seeing the error of his ways after an act of kindness saves the day.

A car accident in upstate New York strands Nero Wolfe, America's largest detective, and Archie Goodwin, his confidential assistant, in the midst of a family feud. The feud, over $45,000 worth of prize bull, turns ugly when the beef in question is found pawing the mangled body of a family scion. Solving the mystery is no problem - but, alas, the evidence keeps disappearing.

When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral—a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found.

Leonard Dyke's writing style didn't offend. But all of his work featured unhappy endings: murders. When four people die, including the author, police finally call on Nero Wolfe. Wolfe baits a trap, and when it springs shut, he finds that truth is stranger (and bloodier) than fiction.

Ariana Osgood has everything she's ever wanted: A place at elite Atherton-Pryce boarding school. Fabulous friends. A new crush. And most important, a new identity. Now that she's officially become Briana Leigh Covington, Ariana's troubled past is dead and buried. Or is it? When the one person who knows her secret arrives on campus, Ariana decides it's time to say good-bye to her ex-best friend---forever.

When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.

It’s a wily killer who dares to strike on Nero Wolfe’s hallowed turf - and leave a corpse strangled with Wolfe’s own soup-stained tie. But no sooner does the gourmandizing sleuth clean up this first course of murder than he faces a gun-toting wife who serves up a confession of homicidal intent - only to become the sole suspect when the corpus delicti is found.

Three clever murderers challenge Nero Wolfe in cases involving lovers who want to make sure neither is a killer, a stable full of suspects in the search for a killer on horseback, and a murderer stalking Wolfe's brownstone.

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

After wasting away in a mental institution for a year and a half, Ariana Osgood is finally back where she belongs. She has a new look, a new name, and a new life---all thanks to her former friend Briana Leigh Covington. Now enrolled as a junior at the exclusive Atherton-Pryce boarding school just outside of Washington, D.C., Ariana sleeps in Frette sheets, flirts with the captain of the crew team, and gossips with the most beautiful girls on campus. She killed to get back her life of privilege. How far will she go?