Private Eye Thriller

New Orleans--September 1947. World War II has been over for only two years, the Civil War for slightly more than eighty. Segregation and racism are still running rampant in the Southern United States, including Louisiana. “Duke” Jefferson, an injured Black war vet and somewhat successful nightclub owner, receives a call from an old war buddy, who tells him he is in trouble. When Duke seeks him out, he discovers that the man has been dead and buried for more than three weeks.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she’s guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

Is there such a thing as a good sociopath? Newly minted private investigator Annalisa Vega is skeptical, but her first client, Mara Delaney, insists that some sociopaths are beneficial to society. Mara has even written a book titled The Good Sociopath that is centered around Chicago neurosurgeon Craig Canning. Dr. Canning has saved hundreds of lives so it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t actually care about his patients, should it? But Mara has a more urgent problem, which is that she is now concerned that Canning might not be such a good sociopath after all.

Serious trouble is brewing in Brighton, California, a sprawling coastal community on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin: Its Mayor has just been murdered, and the chief of police has resigned amid rumors of corruption in his department. Now, ex-police officer Joe Copp has been hired by an old friend, the current Brighton City administrator, to get to the bottom of the municipal mess.

After losing their parents when they were just babies, private investigators Fran and Ken Stein now specialize in helping adoptees find their birth parents. So when a client asks them for help finding her father, with her only clue a rare ukulele, the case is a little weird, sure, but it's nothing they can't handle. But soon Fran and her brother are plunged into a world where nothing makes sense—and not just the fact that a very short (but very cute) NYPD detective keeps trying to take eternal singleton Fran out on dates.

The death of a powerful Chinatown crime boss thrusts private eye Lydia Chin and her partner, Bill Smith, into a storm of double-dealing, subterfuge, murder, and New York City real estate scandal. Choi has left the Tong headquarters building to his niece, who hires Lydia and her partner, Bill Smith, to accompany her to inspect it. The building is at the center of a tug-of-war between Chinatown preservation interests - including Lydia’s brother, Tim - and a real estate developer who’s desperate to get his hands on it.

Here are four hard-boiled detective short stories set in contemporary San Antonio, Texas. Nacho Perez, a former Marine drill instructor, uses his fists and his gun to get to the bottom of his cases. But he takes his lumps along the way.

Lester Caine, a highly decorated New York City Detective Lieutenant, retired after twenty-five years now in the Private Eye cop business, living in West Palm Beach Florida. He thought it was the perfect place for him, his Cadillac convertible and the tanned socialites of Palm Beach. The murder of Palm Beach Judge Desmond Vanderbilt (from book one, Lester Caine Private Eye-Murder on Palm Beach) drew Lester into the dark side of hunting a Nazi war criminal.

Kate Myles was a promising Los Angeles police detective—until an accident and opioid addiction blew up her family and destroyed her career. Struggling to rebuild her life, Kate decides to try her hand at private detective work, but she gets much more than she bargained for when she takes on the case of a celebrated painter found dead in a downtown loft. When Margot Starling’s body was found, the cause of death was assumed to be suicide. Despite her talent and fame, she struggled with a host of demons. But as Kate digs deeper, she learns that Margot had a growing list of enemies

Mystery woman, Morrigan Doyle, is in prison. Finn Doyle, her son, has ties to the Irish mob in New York. He became acquainted with Harry Starke when Harry was investigating his mother’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme. But Finn has an agenda of his own and wants to hire Harry to “find a friend,” Matteo Rossi. Rossi, a low-level thug, a soldier in the Irish mob, is missing and Finn is worried, thinking someone has “offed him,” and he wants to know who. Initially, Harry turns Finn down.

From the New York Times best-selling duo comes a gripping and suspenseful short story about a blind detective who uses her heightened senses to discover life-threatening secrets.

A rapist on the loose, a young girl missing, a robbery at a leisure complex run by a low life, and an old man knocked down by a driver who wouldn't stop. Detective Inspector Jack Frost knew that there would be lots more to come.

The crime novel at its compelling best as David Jason, the star of the television series of the same name, reads R. D. Wingfield's A Touch of Frost.

In Alaska, people disappear every day. In Aleut detective Kate Shugak's Park, they've been disappearing a lot lately. Hikers head into the wilderness unprepared and get lost. Miners quit without notice at the busy Suulutaq Mine. Suicides leave farewell notes and vanish. Not only are Park rats disappearing at an alarming rate, but so is life in the Park as Kate knows it.

A serial killer is terrorising the senior citizens of Denton, and the local police are succumbing to a flu epidemic. Tired and demoralized, the force has to contend with a seemingly perfect young couple suffering arson attacks and death threats, a suspicious suicide, burgularies, pornographic videos, and poison-pen letters.

The Eye of the Beholder is a cult classic that inspired both French and English film adaptations. Joanna Eris has a bad habit of marrying men that wind up dead. An unnamed private detective, known simply as The Eye is hired to investigate the death of her husband. The story charts the development of the detective s dangerous obsession with a femme fatale, as he pursues her across the United States.

Cassie Woods just landed her first big case. Determined to prove herself as a private investigator and catch a cheater, Cassie discovers more than she bargained for, when the unveiling of a devastating secret initiates the emergence of an unwanted gift. Nothing is ever simple. Her personal life is chaos. Her professional life is a minefield. Her hormones are raging out of control.

When a painting vanishes from a maritime museum and a dead body is found nearby, the newly established Lockwood Antique Hunter’s Agency, Freya Lockwood and her Aunt Carole, are called to investigate. Following a lead that takes them aboard a glamorous antiques cruise sailing toward the Red Sea in Jordan, they quickly discover that the ships art gallery is filled with stolen antiquities. Each antique is also listed in Freya’s late mentor’s journals that detail unsolved cases. In chasing a murderer with a stolen painting, they may have found something more sinister than they could’ve imagined.

The Sternwood family, immortalized in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, is in trouble again. Lovely Vivian's psychotic sister, Carmen, has disappeared from the sanitarium, and Vivian herself has once again fallen into the clutches of the shady underworld character Eddie Mars. Enter Philip Marlowe, the original tough-but-tender private eye, resurrected by Robert B. Parker, creator of his own phenomenally popular Spenser mystery series. He saved the Sternwoods once before. The question is: Can he do it again?

Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case.

The Block In the year 2050, the world has experienced a near total economic collapse, destroying the global monetary system. After years of struggle, a new form of exchange arose: cryptocurrencies called scripts, digital IOUs centrally managed through programs called blockchains. And the ambitious Proctors, who control the blocks, restlessly seek to expand their power. Milt Bruckner investigates blocks to counter fraud and is struggling to keep his script-chasing business afloat when a mysterious woman enters his establishment in need of his help.