Private Investigators Fiction

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone—ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk—has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist.

The Harold Calloway Theatre on West 47th Street is home to the new play Triskaidekaphobia, and its playwright has been receiving threatening messages. Theater owner and lead producer Wellington Calloway has hired Jimmy to investigate, but it's a case not without its complications. His mother is the head usher there, and Jimmy grew up on its aisles. His ex, Remy, is also the costume designer for the show, a man he hasn't seen in years.

Noël approche : la campagne revêt son blanc manteau et s’égaye de joyeuses lumières. Toutefois, pour l’inspecteur-chef Armand Gamache, le temps des retrouvailles au coin du feu est troublé par des ombres menaçantes. Ses meilleurs agents ont quitté la section des homicides, son fidèle lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir ne lui parle plus depuis des mois et des forces hostiles semblent liguées contre lui.

Une nuit à Londres, Lula Landry, célèbre mannequin, est retrouvée défenestrée. Son frère, John Bristow, ne croit pas au suicide et contacte Cormoran Strike, détective privé. Strike est un homme à la dérive : il a perdu une jambe à la guerre et sa vie est un désastre. Chargé par Bristow d'enquêter sur la mort de Lula, il se résout à plonger dans les eaux glauques que dissimulent les paillettes de la vie noctambule. Trahisons, secrets, vengeance émergeront peu à peu jusqu'à l'explication finale.

Britt Ickles doesn't remember much from her only visit to her mother's childhood home when she was a kid, except for playing with her cousin Timmy and the eruption of a sudden family feud. That's why, when she drops by unannounced after years of silence, she's shocked when her aunts tell her Timmy never existed, that she must be confusing him with someone else. But Britt can't shake the feeling that Timmy did exist...and that something horrible has happened to him. Something her aunts want to cover up.

Poet Kitty Clark has waited her entire life to see a total eclipse of the sun. News of an impending eclipse thrills her until she learns it will be visible only from Nantucket, where her ex-lover Joe Green recently moved with his new wife. Unable to resist the astronomical lure, she flies from Boston and makes her way to an isolated lighthouse, hoping to avoid Joe. The eclipse itself is overwhelming. When the sun returns a few minutes later, Kitty is standing over the bloodied body of Mrs. Joe Green, claiming "the moon did it."

When Carlotta Carlyle agrees to help a mysterious woman locate her missing immigration card, she doesn't anticipate any complications. But then her client disappears, and the immigration card in question turns up on the dead body of another woman. Suddenly, Carlotta is plunged into the desperate world of illegal aliens, the cold-hearted immigration agents who hunt them down, and the deadly “coyotes” who bring the innocents across the border.

Winner of both the Harper Lee Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines has thrilled countless readers with her Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Here, Sarah investigates when two wealthy heiresses claim a four-million-dollar family necklace was stolen. All the evidence points to insurance fraud, but when Sarah starts poking into the family’s dark secrets, one of the heiresses disappears.

Tension runs high in this working-class neighborhood as a hunger strike to protest strict immigration laws escalates among the Algerian immigrants. Aimée barely escapes death in a car bombing in this tale of terrorism and greed in the shadows of Paris.

When he meets Bob Ghostly, it’s hardly the first time that Fred Carver has been asked to find a missing spouse. But Ghostly’s tale about a beautiful woman who fled for no apparent reason doesn’t quite convince Carver, who presses for more detail. Finally Ghostly admits it: His wife was beautiful, intelligent, and kind, but she was also a heroin addict. She fled their Florida home with half their savings - nearly $10,000 - and he’s afraid she’s going to put it straight into her veins.

Ellery Queen returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of a rich man - believed poor - who died of "old age," a poor man - believed rich - who committed suicide, and a scholarly drunk who disappeared. Shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief…and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen.

The citizens of Concord, Massachusetts, never tire of their heritage. For decades, the intellectuals of this little hamlet have continued endless debates about Concord’s favorite sons: Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and their contemporaries. Concord’s latter-day transcendental scholars are a strange bunch, but none is more peculiar than Homer Kelly, an expert on Emerson and on homicide. An old-fashioned murder is about to put both skills to the test.

As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early part of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery." But that's how it's been for Sam, whose entire existence has been defined by a single horrific event. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, and Sam is forced to unpack, like a Russian doll, secrets within secrets, each more ominous than the one before.

Convoqué dans une vieille ferme abandonnée, Armand Gamache apprend qu'une parfaite inconnue l'a choisi comme exécuteur testamentaire avec MyrnaLanders, la libraire de Three Pines, et Benedict Pouliot, un jeune entrepreneur. Intrigués, tous trois acceptent ce rôle et découvrent des clauses tellement insolites qu'ils doutent de la santé mentale de la défunte.

There was always something slightly dangerous about Joan. So, when she turns up at private inves­tigator Henry Kimball’s office asking him to investigate her husband, he can’t help feeling ill at ease. Just the sight of her stirs up a chilling memory: He knew Joan in his previous life as a high school English teacher, when he was at the center of a tragedy.

The dual forces of good and evil take center stage in the fourth installment in the Jimmy McSwain Files, one that finds the tortured, sexy detective battling an unforeseen enemy: happiness. Yet murder will soon rear its desperate chill, hurtling Jimmy into the highest society and the lowest of lives.

Sam Acquillo has spent most of his time in the Hamptons hanging out with the other half of the moneyed wonderland cops and bartenders, carpenters, store clerks, and firemen. He couldn't care less about the concerns of the one percent, until his best friend, a certified billionaire, is dragged into a high-profile death investigation. For some, there is no power without prestige, and no prestige that can't be bought. The rich can achieve a level of depravity and hate both invisible, and incomprehensible, to the rest of us.

"With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel", goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man's family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning. But too quickly, this "accident" is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones.

Between an epic downpour and a King Tide, the historic streets of Charleston are flooded - and dangerous. A late night tragic accident along the Lower Battery leads Liz Talbot straight to her next case. Who's the client? Well, now, therein lies the first puzzle. When the police arrive at the scene of the accident, Poppy Oliver claims she's only trying to help. But the dent on the front of her Subaru and the victim's injuries provoke a certain Charleston police detective's suspicious nature.

Private investigators Liz Talbot and Nate Andrews are all set to enjoy some quality time on the beach. That's until they get the news about Darius DeAndre Baker. The star of the hit TV show, Main Street USA, has had enough of the Hollywood high life. After 10 years of visiting everyone else's hometown, he returns to his own - Stella Maris, SC. But the moving trucks have barely unloaded when Trina Lynn Causby, Darius's high school girlfriend, turns up dead, and the entire town reels as Darius is arrested. Despite the mounting evidence, Liz and Nate believe Darius is innocent.