Private Investigators Fiction

Six years ago, investigator Sid Halley retired for good. He'd been harassed, beaten, shot, even lost a hand to his investigating business, and enough was enough. For the sake of his wife and new daughter he gave up that life of danger and uncertainty, and he thought nothing would ever lure him back into the game. He thought wrong. Sir Richard Stewart, chairman of the racing authority, begs Sid to investigate a series of dodgy races. Sid adamantly refuses, but the following day, Sir Richard is found dead under suspicious circumstances. And then a man with an Irish accent contacts Sid, telling him to deliver a whitewashed report about the suspected race-fixing...or else.

Bavaria, 1776. When Albrecht Dürer the Much Much Younger's frog prints go missing, he knows exactly where to turn for help. Gretel (yes, that Gretel), now 35 and still living with her gluttonous brother Hans, is the country's most famous private investigator, and she leaps at the opportunity to travel to cosmopolitan Nuremberg to take on the case. But amid the hubbub of the city's annual sausage festival, Gretel struggles to find any clues that point toward the elusive thief.

In 1966 in Pulaski, Tennessee, Bocephus Haynes watched in horror as his father was brutally murdered by 10 local members of the Ku Klux Klan. As an African American lawyer practicing in the birthplace of the Klan years later, Bo has spent his life pursuing justice in his father's name. But when Andy Walton, the man believed to have led the lynch mob 45 years earlier, ends up murdered in the same spot as Bo's father, Bo becomes the prime suspect.

Life as a private investigator in the suburbs of Florence isn’t always as glamourous as Dan Armstrong imagined it to be, until he is asked to investigate a recent spate of violent attacks on a Hollywood movie set in Florence. The star of the show, movie-star royalty Selena Gardner, fears her life is in imminent danger. As Dan investigates, he discovers secrets and scandals are rife within the cast and crew. But with no actual murder, Dan believes these attacks could simply be warnings to someone…until the first body is found.

Madeline Fraser, radio talk show host extraordinaire, had a natural dread of dead air. So when one of her on-air guests signed off at the mike after drinking a glass of a sponsor’s beverage, it was a broadcaster’s nightmare come true.

When millionaire magnate, Rex Hunter is found with his head bashed in on the eighth hole of his prestigious golf and country club in beautiful Chianti, it’s a clear case of murder. Hunter was rich and successful and the envy of many, so retired DCI Dan Armstrong thinks the case will be a hole in one to solve.But as Dan and his trusty sidekick Oscar begin to dig deeper into Hunter’s lifestyle, they discover a man despised by many. A renowned womaniser, ruthless boss and heartless family man, it seems no one is particularly sorry to see Hunter dead.

Stone Barrington receives a rather unexpected phone call from Arrington Calder, the ex-girlfriend with whom he has a son. Arrington's much older husband, the actor Vance Calder, has just died, leaving her a fortune in Centurion Studios stock. Arrington has plans for the money and asks Stone to represent her in the sale of the company. But when he arrives at her home in Bel-Air to finalize the deal, things take a nasty turn.

Tannie Maria (Tannie meaning Auntie, the respectful Afrikaans address for a woman older than you) is a middle-aged widow who likes to cook - and eat. She shares her culinary love as a recipe columnist for the local paper - until The Gazette decides its readers are hungrier for advice on matters of the heart rather than ideas for lunch and dinner. Tannie Maria doesn't like the change but soon discovers she has a knack - and a passion - for helping people.

When Private Investigator Jim Bean is called to conduct a simple insurance investigation at a Nevada trailer park, he finds himself wrapped up in a case that’s more complicated than anything he could have imagined. There’s a torched trailer. A missing woman named Emilee who harbors a dark past. And the Ward family, with their own sinister secrets to hide. Jim quickly realizes that if he wants to find Emilee, he’s going to have to get closer to the Ward family - and untangle their twisted web of lies. But the closer he gets to the truth, the more dangerous things become.

Like most families, they had their secrets...and they hid them under a genteelly respectable veneer. No onlooker would guess that prim Vera Hillyard and her beautiful, adored younger sister, Eden, were locked in a dark and bitter combat over one of those secrets. England in the '50s was not kind to women who erred, so they had to use every means necessary to keep the truth hidden behind closed doors - even murder.

Eleven years ago, wealthy Nebraska businessman James Herold gave his only son, Paul, a very raw deal. Now he wants Nero Wolfe to track Paul down so that he can make amends. But what if the young man doesn’t want to be found...and what if he’s the same PH who’s currently on trial for cold-blooded murder?

In what may be her most unsettling novel to date, Sue Grafton's T Is for Trespass is also her most direct confrontation with the forces of evil. Beginning slowly with the day-to-day life of a private eye, Grafton suddenly shifts from the voice of Kinsey Millhone to that of Solana Rojas, introducing listeners to a chilling sociopath. Rojas is not her birth name. It is an identity she cunningly stole, an identity that gives her access to private caregiving jobs.

When David Barney was acquitted in the shooting death of his wealthy wife, Isabelle, a good many thought that justice had not been served, including Kenneth Voight, Isabelle's former husband. Now, five years later, Voight is the plaintiff in a civil suit in which Barney stands accused of Isabelle's wrongful death. The stakes are high, but time is running short. Enter sexy, savvy ex-cop-turned-P.I. Kinsey Millhone, brought in by Voight to gather the necessary damning evidence.

The young girl lies in a ditch without a scratch on her - a white high school student stretched out dead in the black part of Atlanta. She was a rich girl from a cold family, too genteel for the neighborhood where she died, and only the baby in her belly suggests how she might have gotten there. For Detective Frank Clemons, the scene is far too familiar. Too close to how it was when he found his own daughter, dead in the woods by her own hand, her youthful beauty cruelly ravaged by depression. To hang on to sanity, he must do everything he can to find justice for the dead.

Philip Kerr crafts a thrilling chapter from his critically acclaimed Bernie Gunther series. In Field Gray, Bernie finds himself imprisoned in 1954—and told he can either work for French intelligence or he can hang. Accepting his new job, Bernie begins interviewing POWs returning from Germany. And things get interesting when he meets a French war criminal and member of the French SS who has been posing as a German Wehrmacht officer.

Four young boys are left alone in a hotel room while their parents dine downstairs. When Sara Farrow checks on the children at midnight, her son is missing. Distrustful of the police, Sara turns to Crimson Lake’s unlikeliest private investigators - disgraced cop Ted Conkaffey and convicted killer Amanda Pharrell. For Ted, the case couldn’t have come at a worse time. Two years ago, a false accusation robbed him of his career, his reputation, and most importantly, his family. But now, Lillian, the daughter he barely knows, is coming to stay in his ramshackle cottage by the lake.

Charley Davidson, Grim Reaper extraordinaire, is pissed. She’s been kicked off the earthly plane for eternity - which is the appropriate amount of time to make a person stark-raving mad. But someone’s looking out for her, and she’s allowed to return after a mere hundred years in exile. Is it too much to hope for that not much has changed? Apparently it is. Bummer.

Obsessed with the iconic '60s classic Easy Rider, encyclopedic Floridaphile, lovable serial killer, and movie buff extraordinaire Serge A. Storms devises his wildest plan yet: finish the journey begun by his freewheeling heroes, Captain America and Billy, tragically cut short by some shotgun-wielding rednecks.

Les-Eyzies-de-Tayac is known for three things: pâte de fois gras, truffles, and prehistoric remains. The little village, in fact, is the headquarters of the prestigious Institute de Prehistoire, which studies the abundant local fossils. But when a pet dog emerges from a nearby cave carrying parts of a human skeleton - by no means a fossilized one - Chief Inspector Lucien Anatole Joly puts in a call to his old friend, Gideon Oliver, the famed “Skeleton Detective.”

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.