Private Investigators Fiction

The White Council of Wizards has drafted Harry Dresden as a Warden and assigned him to look into rumors of black magic in Chicago. Malevolent entities that feed on fear are loose in the Windy City, but it's all in a day's work for a wizard, his faithful dog, and a talking skull named Bob.

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.

Private Detective Cormoran Strike is visiting his family in Cornwall when he is approached by a woman asking for help finding her mother, Margot Bamborough - who went missing in mysterious circumstances in 1974. Strike has never tackled a cold case before, let alone one 40 years old. But despite the slim chance of success, he is intrigued and takes it on; adding to the long list of cases that he and his partner in the agency, Robin Ellacott, are currently working on.

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 an unknown someone shoots him and leaves him to die, Harry Dresden hopes he might be heading to a better place. Unfortunately being dead doesn't make Harry's life any easier. Trapped between life and death, he learns that his friends are in serious trouble. Only by finding his murderer can he save his friends and move on - a feat that would be a lot easier if he had a body and access to his powers. Worse still are the malevolent shadows that roam Chicago, controlled by a dark entity that wants Harry to suffer even in death.

A missing scientist and deep pockets pull Colonel Carl Butler out of retirement, investigating another mystery that puts him and his team - and the future of relations with alien species - in danger in Colonyside, the exciting follow-up to Planetside and Spaceside. A military hero is coming out of disgrace - straight into the line of fire...Carl Butler was once a decorated colonel. Now he’s a disgraced recluse, hoping to live out the rest of his life on a backwater planet where no one cares about his “crimes” and everyone leaves him alone.

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.

Although it's a soggy start to spring in Wildwood Cove, the weather clears up just in time for the town to host an amateur chef competition. Marley McKinney, owner of the Flip Side pancake house, already signed up to volunteer, and chef Ivan Kaminski is one of the judges. But when Marley visits her landscaper boyfriend Brett at the site of the Victorian mansion that's being restored as the Wildwood Inn, she discovers something else pushing up daisies: human remains.

Max Freeman is seeking refuge from the familiar demons of his former life as a Philadelphia police officer in his secluded shack deep in the Everglades. But his self-imposed isolation is interrupted when he receives a desperate call from his best friend, attorney Billy Manchester. There has been a recent string of suspicious deaths - all elderly women, all from a poor neighborhood, and all with sizable and recently sold-off insurance policies - which the police have been unable or unwilling to investigate.

No one's tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost an entire year, and his life finally seems to be calming down. For once, the future looks fairly bright. But the past casts one hell of a long shadow.

Dennis Gates, a forty-nine-year-old car dealer in Marlborough, was at his office in August, 2010, when a young man drove onto the forecourt of the garage, pulled up by the office door, and calmly walked around the front of the car. Gates came to the door expecting to greet a potential customer. The killer swung a gun up and fired twice from point-blank range, hitting Gates in the throat. The police believed it was a possible contract killing.

An academic so conservative he thought Ronald Reagan was a pinko, Hale Markham rules Prescott University like an intellectual tyrant - until the morning he’s found dead at the bottom of one of Prescott’s famously beautiful ravines. Every liberal on campus hated the crotchety old crank, but which one is responsible for giving Markham his final push to the right? The case so intrigues the incomparable, reclusive master detective Nero Wolfe that he takes the unusual step of leaving the confines of his home.

When a renowned theater director senses something amiss during his latest production, he calls Nero Wolfe. Though the corpulent genius wouldn’t normally accept a job this vague, a mutual friend dangles the prospect of a very rare orchid in exchange for his services, and Wolfe can’t resist. With a mind to suss out useful backstage gossip, Wolfe turns to his faithful assistant, Archie Goodwin, to impersonate a journalist in order to speak to the cast. Though Goodwin’s conversations prove unfruitful, on his last day at the theater, the director is murdered in his sound-proof booth.

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.

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.

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.

Werebear shifter Annette Garsea is a caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency. When a selectively mute and freakishly strong teen werewolf is put in her custody, Annette has to uncover the young girl's secrets if she's to have any hopes of helping her. And not even the growling of a scruffy private investigator can distract her from her mission....

After being murdered by a mystery assailant, navigating his way through the realm between life and death, and being brought back to the mortal world, Harry realizes that maybe death wasn’t all that bad - because he is no longer Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard. He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn’t about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day.… Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful. He doesn’t know the half of it… Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains - led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone - to break into the highest-security vault in town, so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.

Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard, takes on a case as a favor to his friend Thomas - a vampire of dubious integrity - only to become the prime suspect in a series of ghastly murders.