Private Investigators Fiction

At the start of another pitiless winter, the wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Saken with grief and seeking consolation, Medora contacts nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core. Sixty years old, ailing in both body and spirit, and estranged from his daughter and wife, Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings.

When Lily Rowan doesn’t laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something’s wrong. Her niece Noreen has been running around with Sparky Linville, a club-hopping bad boy who’s the terror of Manhattan nightlife, and the last time she went out with him, Noreen wasn’t herself when she came home. Springing into action, Goodwin waits for Linville outside of Morgana’s, a chrome-and-glass palace. They nearly come to blows, but Linville’s bodyguard intervenes, and Goodwin retreats to plan his next move. In the morning, Linville is dead, and Goodwin is the chief suspect.

Five years ago, mage private investigator Alice Worth escaped her grandfather Moses Murphy's organized crime syndicate. Now, her grandfather's war with local boss Darius Bell has drawn her out of hiding and put her in the crosshairs of not one but two merciless crime lords. Her decision to intervene in their war has endangered everyone Alice cares about and threatens to destroy the life she's built for herself, including her relationship with alpha werewolf Sean Maclin.

Amos Decker is a former professional football player whose career was ended by a terrible hit. Now a police detective, Amos is still haunted by a side effect from the accident he can never forget. One night Decker comes home from a stakeout to find his wife, young daughter, and brother-in-law horrifically murdered. Obviously scarred and nearly broken, Decker has to use his skills as a detective and his unusual brain capacity to try to catch the monster who killed his family.

As the Great Blizzard of 1888 cripples the vast machinery that is New York City, heiress Prudence MacKenzie sits anxiously within her palatial Fifth Avenue home waiting for her fiance's safe return. But the fearsome storm rages through the night. With daylight, more than 200 people are found to have perished in the icy winds and treacherous snowdrifts. Among them is Prudence's fiancé - his body frozen, his head crushed by a heavy branch, his fingers clutching a single playing card, the ace of spades.

It starts with a few near-accidents: A car almost swipes Mike Hammer when he’s crossing the street. A junkie robs the notoriously hardboiled detective at knifepoint. A fight on a subway platform comes close to pushing him in front of a train. While any one of these could be a coincidence, together they make a conspiracy—one that Hammer will have to end in order to survive. And when it comes to finishing something—or someone—nobody does it better than Hammer.

For the men of Madison Avenue, the battle between soft-drink giants Cherr-o-key and AmeriCherry seems heaven-sent. For years now, the firm of Mills/Lake/Ryman has fought to help Cherr-o-key become the nation’s favorite fizzy cherry soda, but each time they come up with a new slogan, mascot, or jingle, AmeriCherry somehow beats them to it. There’s a mole inside the agency, and only Nero Wolfe can ferret him out.

Arnold Landon finds himself drawn into another bitter dispute over land—in which a defenseless old woman pays the ultimate price. To the casual observer, Penbrook Farm might seem like a ramshackle hovel, buried deep in the woods of Northumberland. But to fragile old Sarah Ellis, it’s home. And the developers can have the place over her dead body. Of course, no one ever expected it to come to that.

There’s chaos in Hollywood at the end of the New Year’s Eve countdown. Working her graveyard shift, LAPD detective Renée Ballard waits out the traditional rain of lead as hundreds of revelers shoot their guns into the air. Only minutes after midnight, Ballard is called to a scene where a hardworking auto shop owner has been fatally hit by a bullet in the middle of a crowded street party.

When Jake Boulder is asked to help investigate the murder of Kira Niemeyer, he soon finds himself tracking a serial killer who selects his next victim in a most unusual manner. As the body count rises, Boulder has to work with the police to identify the killer before more lives are taken. What ensues is a twisted game of cat and mouse. Only Boulder or the Watcher can survive.

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hen...and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens!

This entry in Carolyn Haines' best-selling "Bones" series finds Sarah Booth Delaney, a southern belle with a penchant for amateur sleuthing, back on the case. When black pianist Ivory Keys is murdered, Zinnia, Mississippi, divides along racial lines. The prime suspect is Scott Hampton, Key's protege, who is rich and white. Sarah is hired to prove Scott's innocence, but to do so, she'll have to navigate some treacherous waters.

Holland Taylor is comfortable in interrogation rooms. For years the cold dark cells of the St. Paul Police Department homicide squad were his turf, and with the help of his partner he wrung confessions out of countless killers. But that was long ago. Tonight Taylor is on the other side of the desk. Tonight he is the suspect.

She may be a Mississippi belle, but Sarah Booth Delaney is no pampered daddy’s girl. Unwed and over thirty, Sarah has her own set of problems - like coping with regular hauntings by her great-great-grandmother’s nanny, a busybody of a ghost who’s set on marrying her off to the first suitor who comes calling. But when an old friend is in trouble, Sarah Booth doesn’t hesitate to get involved.

Spencer Quinn's Heart of Barkness is the latest in the New York Times best-selling series that the Los Angeles Times called "nothing short of masterful".

The course of true love never did run smooth for PI Mike Hammer. His secretary and partner, Velda, has walked out on him without explanation, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then an old cop turns up murdered - a cop who once worked with Velda on the NYPD Vice Squad. What's more, Mike's pal, Captain Pat Chambers, has discovered that Velda is in Florida, now the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn.

There's a body beneath the skip bins. Fae on the forklift. A vampire in the manager's office. And there's definitely something skeevy going on in the locker rooms. Hi. I'm Pet. Well, not exactly Pet. I am a pet. I was meant to stay out of it, but somebody's gotta do something when humans are being killed by Behindkind creatures.

Mike Hammer is on the case, this time hunting the murderer of his old friend and bootlegger-turned-legit-businessman Packy Paragon. Already torn up by the disappearance of Velda, his beloved secretary, Mike Hammer carves a brutal path for vengeance. Drinking heavily, his relationships fraying, his behavior self-destructive, Hammer has to track down Paragon’s black book, with the names of every corrupt official in town. With deception everywhere, and a whole host of reasons to want the ledger, Hammer has to pull himself together and solve the case before all hell breaks loose.

Turmoil, sickness, and destruction are sweeping through Europe - and its effects are being felt all the way across the world in Seattle. Harper Blaine and her lover, Quinton, suspect that Quinton’s father, James Purlis - and his terrifying Ghost Division - are involved. Following a dark trail of grotesque crimes and black magic across the Old World, the pair slowly draws closer to their quarry. But finding and dismantling the Ghost Division won’t be enough to stop the horror that Purlis has unwittingly set in motion.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives - meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him.