Private Investigators Fiction

Former NYPD detective Thomas Austin is enjoying a rare date at a monday night football game in Seattle when the evening takes a horrifying turn. A team of merciless terrorists has taken over the stadium by force, blocking cellphone signals and sealing the exits. The terrorists have a single demand: release a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative from a US supermax prison. And they have a simple threat: do so in the next 24 hours or they will blow up the stadium, killing themselves along with tens of thousands of innocent victims.

Former SAS soldier David Shelley was part of the most covert operations team in the special forces. Now settling down to civilian life in London, he has plans for a safer and more stable existence. But the shocking death of a young woman Shelley once helped protect puts those plans on hold. The police rule the death a suicide but the grieving parents can't accept their beloved Emma would take her own life. They need to find out what really happened, and they turn to their former bodyguard, Shelley, for help.

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret—but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in. When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever.

Holiday time in the Valley, and in the holiday spirit - despite the dismal shape of the finances at the Little Detective Agency - Bernie refers a potential client to Victor Klovsky, a fellow private eye. It’s also true that the case - promising lots of online research but little action - doesn’t appeal to Bernie, while it seems perfect for Victor, who is not cut out for rough stuff. But Victor disappears in a rough-stuff way, and when he doesn’t show up at his mom’s to light the Hanukkah candles, she hires Chet and Bernie to find him.

Charley Davidson isn't your everyday, run-of-the-mill grim reaper. She's more of a paranormal private eye/grim reaper extraordinaire. However, she gets sidetracked when the sexy, sultry son of Satan, Reyes Farrow, moves in next door. To further complicate matters, Reyes is her main suspect in an arson case. Charley has vowed to stay away from him until she can find out the truth…but then dead women start appearing in her apartment, one after another, each lost, confused, and terrified beyond reason.

A dog walker finds a human bone on lonely Salisbury Plain. DCI Mackenzie Jones investigates the grisly discovery but cannot explain how it ended up there. She contacts disgraced ex-detective Atticus Priest and the two of them trace the bone to a graveyard in the nearby village of Imber. But the village was abandoned after it was purchased by the Ministry of Defence to train the army, so why have bodies been buried in the graveyard since the church was closed?

For years, Jake Jackson has been a high-flying detective in London. But then one day he receives a letter from his reclusive uncle – he has left Jake his property in the middle of the countryside. For Jake, it is the perfect opportunity for a fresh start. At first, life in the middle of nowhere is everything Jake could wish for. His new home is beautiful, his surroundings are stunning, and he enjoys getting back to nature. But then, what starts as a fun village treasure hunt turns deadly, when a young woman’s bones are discovered.

When Jack Morgan stops by Private's Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip filled with fine food and sightseeing. But Jack is quickly pressed into duty after a call from his client, Sherman Wilkerson, asking Jack to track down his young granddaughter, who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer. Before Jack can locate her, several members of France's cultural elite are found dead - murdered in stunning, symbolic fashion. The only link between the crimes is a mysterious graffiti tag.

Martin Cruz Smith has written nine previous novels featuring Arkady Renko, one of modern detective fiction’s most popular characters. These novels, beginning with 1981’s international sensation Gorky Park, have collectively traced Russia's evolution over the last half-century. Now, with Independence Square, Smith focuses on the fraught and frenzied days leading up to Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine.

There are few jobs that Harvey Longmire hasn't had, but he made his name as campaign trail fixer, an expert in the art of exploiting an enemy's secrets. For nearly a decade, Harvey was the sharpest man in the Beltway, but he quit in 1972, trading political dirty work for a quiet life on a farm. Now two old friends want him back in the game. A millionaire named Vullo has started a foundation to investigate conspiracies, and Harvey happens to be the expert on the most prominent case: the infamous disappearance of a man named Arch Mix.

An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow. Alongside him is Salvador Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, insistently muttering "grasshoppers" as they try to make their escape. Dalí insists on being carried across the lawn, so Peters hobbles along with the surrealist in his arms. They get in the car just as the monk chops down the front door. The car doesn't start, and the monk charges silently, the ax in the air.

The voice was smooth, cultured, almost tender as it oozed from the phone into Connor Fraser's ear. 'I've heard about you, Mr Fraser, and I'm very impressed by your work. So I've decided to employ you. I am going to kill Father John Donnelly sometime in the next seven days. And you are going to stop me—or die trying. If you check your account, you'll see I've deposited £70,000. And, just to be fair, I'll give you an hour, starting now, to find Father Donnelly before the games begin. Refuse my offer, and someone you love will die. Good hunting, to both of us.'

When successful mystery novelist and fledgling private detective Marius Quin is invited to speak at the Mystery and Detection Society he jumps at the chance of a luxurious weekend away on the English coast. But arriving at Torquay’s Grand Hotel with his sleuthing partner Lady Bella Montague, there is the definite sense that all is not well. When they wake the next morning to discover the body of a cantankerous local in the hotel pool, the things go from bad to worse. But how can the duo catch a killer when every piece of evidence they uncover is contradicted by two more?

In The Lady in the Lake, hard-boiled crime-fiction master Raymond Chandler brings us the story of a couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - who have become the objects of Philip Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo, and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

Joe Pike didn't expect to rescue a woman that day. He went to the bank same as anyone goes to the bank, and returned to his Jeep. So when Isabel Roland, the lonely young teller who helped him, steps out of the bank on her way to lunch, Joe is on hand when two men abduct her. Joe chases them down, and the two men are arrested. But instead of putting the drama to rest, the arrests are only the beginning of the trouble for Joe and Izzy.

It started with the murder of Kinsey Millhone's sometime drinking buddy, an insurance claims adjuster. But before long Kinsey stumbles onto a massive insurance scam. Going undercover as a wisecracking vamp, Millhone descends into the Los Angeles nether world of machismo and gang hideouts. Her companion, terrified at having crossed the violent crook Raymond Maldonado, is Bibianna Diaz, no Girl Scout herself.

Political speechwriter Becca Matlock is at the top of her professional game, working for the re-election campaign of New York's popular governor, when she receives the first phone call: "Stop sleeping with the governor or I'll kill him."

There’s no one and nothing the great detective Nero Wolfe wouldn’t take on if the price was right. That’s something wealthy society widow Rachel Bruner is counting on when she writes him a check for a whopping hundred grand. But even Wolfe has a moment’s doubt when he finds out why the prize is so generous. For the oversize genius and his able assistant Archie Goodwin are about to lock horns with the FBI - and those highly trained G-men have a way with threats, tails, and bugs that could give even sedentary sleuth Nero Wolfe a run for his money.

Dorothy Graham is dead, which is inconvenient, not least for her. Luckily, she has planned for this eventuality. Now, if any of the truly dreadful people she is related to want to get their hands on her money, they’re going to have to do so via a fiendish difficult and frankly bizarre competition of Dorothy’s devising. After all, just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a last laugh at the expense of people who made your life miserable.

The Lolita Conspiracy: Brandon Beck hanged himself, or did he? On a cold dark night in February, Harry Starke runs into someone he hasn’t seen in almost twenty-five years. The Last Straw: Cassie Morgan was just seventeen-years-old when she died at the hands of a sadistic killer. Homicide Detective Harry Starke caught the case and he knew right from the beginning that it was going to be a bad one. One Dark Night: One dark night in late summer of 1998, teenagers Hunter Flagg and Samantha Goodkind were murdered, shot to death in Hunter’s pickup.