Private Detective Mystery

Phoebe Siegler first meets Charles Heist in a shabby trailer on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. She’s looking for her friend’s missing daughter, Arabella, and hires Heist to help. A laconic loner who keeps his pet opossum in a desk drawer, Heist intrigues the sarcastic and garrulous Phoebe. Reluctantly, he agrees to help. The unlikely pair navigates the enclaves of desert-dwelling vagabonds and finds Arabella is in serious trouble - caught in the middle of a violent standoff that only Heist, mysteriously, can end.

During a stifling summer in Sydney, the body of a chaplain’s daughter is found wrapped in black plastic on the deserted grounds of an elite boarding school. Is it the work of the killer who’s been stalking the privileged neighborhoods along the Parramatta River? Gut instinct tells Detective Sergeant Rose Riley something even more devious might be at play.

When single mom and recent widow Cameron Chandler takes a much-needed job at Penny-wise Investigations, a detective agency conveniently located in a suburban shopping mall, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Her first case is to locate a runaway girl, something her predecessor had been pursuing before he disappeared. Following in his footsteps, the trail leads to a survivalist camp on a remote island in northern Puget Sound. Armed with only a Swiss Army Knife and her quirky on-the-job training as a suburban sleuth, Cameron uncovers more than she bargained for.

On a hot summer’s night in 1978 Sacramento, with the disco era raging, adventurous but bored Private Detective Al Repane, a.k.a. the disco detective, falls asleep under his desk only to be awakened by a visit from a beautiful perspective European client. Former concert violinist Constance "CC" Borgia, and 10 million dollars, need protection from CC’s greed-driven Ex. Just as lust begins to promise love, three heavies whisk her away, almost from his very bed! Pride deflated, head busted, and still brain fuzzed, he has to get back in gear to rescue the client before time runs out.

1950s Staffordshire. Within the clay tanks at the pottery company Shentall's, a body has been found. Amid cries of industrial espionage and sabotage of this leader of the pottery industry, there is a case of bitter murder to solve for Inspector Hedley Nicholson. Kelly's mystery won the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 1961 for its impeccable sense of place and detail, and for the emotional weight of its central crime. The novel is part of a shift from the cosiness of crime novels before to mysteries characterised by their psychological interest and affecting realism. An influential classic.

Following an unforgettable cast of characters and a jaded female P.I. enmeshed in a criminal conspiracy in 1980s Mississippi, The Queen City Detective Agency is a riveting, razor-sharp Southern noir that unravels the greed, corruption, and racism at the heart of the American Dream.

Battle and burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to the folly known as Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has investigated, involving golf, horseracing, Civil War re-enactment and the Cyrillic alphabet.

It's 1943, and Gunny Mac and the boys go to Cleveland when saboteurs destroy Alan Burke's father's ship-building factory on the Cuyahoga River needed to build Liberty ships. Father John is murdered in the confessional at the Shrine of St. Stanislaus, and Mac will burn down Cleveland to find those responsible.

London, 1849 When a boy is found drowned in the River Thames at Hungerford Stairs, novelist Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street are mystified to discover that the child is not the missing youngster for whom they have been searching. As Dickens and Jones delve deeper into London's poverty-stricken backstreets, they stumble across two more bodies. A serial killer is on the loose. And Charles is terrified that someone close to him may be one of the victims.

Eric Slater returns from the Navy to find that his childhood friend may have been murdered. Angela Jeffries begs him to investigate, and Maggie, the little sister he barely remembers, wants to help. It turns out, the stunning redhead is one hell of an investigator. As their feelings turn romantic, Maggie and Slater follow a trail of deception and murder, hoping to prove their dead friend innocent of what they fear most. No one is safe, and the men involved will stop at nothing to cover their tracks.

Private investigator Jessica Shaw is used to getting anonymous tips. But after receiving a photo of a three-year-old kidnapped from Los Angeles twenty-five years ago, Jessica is stunned to recognize the little girl as herself. Eager for answers, Jessica heads to LA’s dark underbelly. When she learns that her biological mother was killed the night she was abducted, Jessica’s determined to solve a case the police have forgotten.

Gil Vine is the quick-thinking, compassionate chief security officer at the fashionable Plaza Royale Hotel. While investigating a routine disturbance complaint in the Tower apartments, Gil finds himself enmeshed in a deadly struggle for control of a fabulous fortune in oil. As always in the Gil Vine mysteries, life behind the scenes of a large hotel is painted for the listener in fascinating detail. Vine is at his best in this installment of the series as the hotel detective does his best to protect the Plaza Royale's reputation and also stop the series of murders.

Blacklisted by the police. Being sued by a client. And broke. Things can’t get any worse for Brighton’s No. 1 Private Detective, Joe Grabarz, in this blistering debut novel from award-winning writer Tom Trott. That’s when his best friend’s body washes up on the beach. Could it really have been 10 years? How could his life have ended like this? He needs answers. But with the city in the grips of organised crime, and struggling to deal with an influx of legal highs, who cares about just another dead drug dealer?

The Return of Sherlock Holmes is a collection of 13 Sherlock Holmes stories, originally published in 1903-1904, by Arthur Conan Doyle. The stories were published in the Strand Magazine in Great Britain, and Collier's in the United States. The book was first published in February 1905 by McClure, Phillips & Co. (New York) then on 7 March 1905 by Georges Newnes, Ltd. (London) and was the first Holmes collection since 1893, when Holmes had "died" in "The Final Problem". Having published The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901–1902, which was set before Holmes' "death", Doyle came under intense pressure to revive his famous character.

Twenty-three years ago, Christina Tolmie vanished without trace from northern France, leaving her young daughters Kate and Flora orphaned and alone. Now Flora is also missing. In desperation, Kate searches her Edinburgh house and finds a piece of note paper with just one name: Cal McGill.

It was just another busy day at the Plaza Royale - until a pretty hotel manicurist, white with terror, suddenly fled through the lobby and disappeared into the crowded Manhattan streets. Her unexplained flight, and the discovery of some bloodstained pillowslips, gave Gil Vine, the hotel's detective, the tipoff that trouble was brewing. Its source turned out to be the suite of a secretive South American mogul and his entourage including a beautiful señorita, a vicious monkey, a muscular valet, and an elusive character known as Miguel.

At the request of Her Majesty's government, private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker agrees to take on his least favorite kind of assignment - he's to provide security for a secret conference with the French government. But shortly after the parties land at the island, Lord Hargrave is killed by a sniper shot, and the French ambassador's head of security is found stabbed to death. The only means of egress from the island - a boat - has been sent away, and the means of signaling for help has been destroyed.

Inside Alaska's biggest national park, surrounding the town of Niniltna, a gold mining company has started buying up land. The residents of the Park, are uneasy. "But gold is up to nine hundred dollars an ounce," is the refrain of Talia Macleod, the popular Alaskan skiing champ the company hired to improve their relations with Alaskans. And she promises much needed jobs to the locals. But before she can make her way to every village in the area to make her case at town meetings and village breakfasts, there are two murders—one a long-standing mine opponent, and Ms. Macleod herself.

Nan and I discover that someone has been embezzling funds from the local animal shelter. If we can't find the culprit soon, the shelter may not be able to keep its lights on and those poor homeless pets won't have anywhere to go.

Sherlock Jones, a modern-day hard-boiled detective, is an aging dysfunctional cynic whose major food groups are bourbon, caffeine, nicotine, Vicodin, and bar food. He supplements his army disability check by advertising as a private investigator on Craig’s List, offering divorce tails and missing person traces. At first, when he’s offered a retainer to investigate an actual murder, he sees it as an easy way to pad his meager income, but he quickly realizes reclaiming his own self-worth through the eyes of his client with the sexy European accent is worth much more than $500.