Private Investigators Fiction

In this dark and gritty collection - featuring short stories from Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and Rob Thurman - nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil.... Unfortunately, that's exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.

Marin had the perfect life. Married to her college sweetheart, she owns a chain of upscale hair salons, and Derek runs his own company. They're admired in their community and are a loving family—until their world falls apart the day their son, Sebastian, is taken. A year later, Marin is a shadow of herself. The FBI search has gone cold. The publicity has faded. She and her husband rarely speak. She hires a PI to pick up where the police left off, but instead of finding Sebastian, she learns that Derek is having an affair with a younger woman.

Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted to a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends.

Not every danger comes in the form of a mega-threat like a Titan. Some predators are a lot cozier...more personal. When one such creature threatens an independent tutor, Harry Dresden must shake off the blood and dirt of his most recent battles and rise to the occasion, even when it turns out that the new predator is far more dangerous and connected than first appearances would suggest.

Professor Olive Twist has come to Zinnia, Mississippi, to study a mysterious grave wherein lies the Lady in Red, a perfectly preserved and stunningly beautiful but unnamed and unclaimed body. Olive claims she can not only identify the corpse, she can also prove the woman’s scandalous role in the nation’s history. Olive takes it a step too far, though, when she starts connecting elite Zinnia families with the same scandal. Dander up, Zinnia’s society ladies know only one way to handle Olive: They call on the private investigative services of Sarah Booth Delaney.

Thirty years ago, Wilde was found as a boy living feral in the woods, with no memory of his past. Now an adult, he still doesn't know where he comes from, and another child has gone missing. No one seems to take Naomi Pine's disappearance seriously, not even her father - with one exception. Hester Crimstein, a television criminal attorney, knows through her grandson that Naomi was relentlessly bullied at school. Hester asks Wilde - with whom she shares a tragic connection - to use his unique skills to help find Naomi.

This collection is a bundle of the first four books in the Private Investigator Mason Black crime thriller series. Welcome to San Francisco, where depraved serial killers lurk in the dark.

Del Sol, New Mexico is known for three things: its fry-an-egg-on-the-cement summers, its strong cups of coffee - and, now, a nationwide manhunt? Del Sol native Sunshine Vicram has returned to town as the elected sheriff - thanks to her adorably meddlesome parents who nominated her - and she expects her biggest crime wave to involve an elderly flasher named Doug. But a teenage girl is missing, a kidnapper is on the loose, and all of this is reminding Sunshine why she left Del Sol in the first place.

A year has passed since LAPD detective Renée Ballard quit the force in the face of misogyny, demoralization, and endless red tape. But after the chief of police himself tells her she can write her own ticket within the department, Ballard takes back her badge, leaving “the Late Show” to rebuild and lead the cold case unit at the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over.

Here, together for the first time, are the shorter works of best-selling author Jim Butcher - a compendium of cases that Harry and his cadre of allies managed to close in record time. The tales range from the deadly serious to the absurdly hilarious.

Après avoir fait libérer un homme de prison, l’avocat Mickey Haller est inondé de demandes de détenus clamant leur innocence. Pour étudier leurs dossiers, il embauche son demi-frère, l’ex-inspecteur du LAPD Harry Bosch. Un seul cas retient l’attention de ce dernier : une mère accusée d’avoir tué son ex-mari, adjoint des services du shérif, lesquels se sont montrés pressés de "rendre justice" à l’un des leurs. Haller exige que l’affaire soit immédiatement rejugée. Tandis que Bosch se lance sur les traces du véritable assassin, l’avocat à la Lincoln lutte contre l’impitoyable machine judiciaire de l’État de Californie.

Zinnia, Mississippi is rife with quirky characters, but the arrival of three sister witches - and their intention to open a Wiccan boarding school - sets the small town on its ear. And bodies begin to accumulate as a result. They're setting up their boarding school in an old dairy - a piece of property with tremendous development potential. And they're standing in the way of "progress", according to some in the town. When young Corey Fontana goes missing, Delaney Detective Agency is hired to find the youth - who's well known as a local hooligan. His mother believes the witches have abducted her son....

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.

Lady Emily Hardcastle is an eccentric widow with a secret past. Florence Armstrong, her maid and confidante, is an expert in martial arts. The year is 1908 and they've just moved from London to the country, hoping for a quiet life. But it is not long before Lady Hardcastle is forced out of her self-imposed retirement. There's a dead body in the woods, and the police are on the wrong scent. Lady Hardcastle makes some enquiries of her own, and it seems she knows a surprising amount about crime investigation...

Jack Taggart, an undercover Mountie, lives in a world where the good guys and the bad guys change places in a heartbeat. Taggart is very good at what he does. Too good to be playing by the rules. The brass decide to assign a new partner to spy on him.Taggart's new partner discovers a society dependent upon unwritten rules. To break these rules is to lose respect. To lose respect is to lose one's life. Loose Ends is terrifying. It is a tale of violence, corruption, and retribution, but it is also a story of honour and respect.

When a big New York theater production comes to Zinnia, Mississippi, murder takes center stage - and Sarah, it turns out, is the star suspect.

Adrian Monk has journeyed into the realm of the cult science fiction show Beyond Earth, where he meets fans just as obsessive as he is. Monk is at their convention because there may be a killer lurking in the Beyond Earth community: someone in a starship uniform has very publicly gunned down the show's legendary creator, Conrad Stipe. Could a fan be that furious at him for selling out to an exploitative Hollywood producer? Or is there more going on behind the scenes in Stipe's life?

My dog once took a bullet that was intended for me. A bullet that ripped through his chest, narrowly missing his heart, and exited through his shoulder blade. This left him unconscious on the floor of my home. Amazingly, this bullet did not kill him. Ten years ago, I adopted Blue after I broke up with my boyfriend one hot, early summer night with the windows open and the neighborhood listening. The next morning I went straight to the pound in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Articles on buying your first dog tell you never to buy a dog on impulse.

Charley sees dead people. That's right, she sees dead people. And it's her job to convince them to "go into the light." But when these very dead people have died under less than ideal circumstances (i.e., murder), sometimes they want Charley to bring the bad guys to justice. Complicating matters are the intensely hot dreams she's been having about an Entity who has been following her all her life...and it turns out he might not be dead after all. In fact, he might be something else entirely.