Private Investigators Fiction

Mike Hammer is on the case, this time hunting the murderer of his old friend and bootlegger-turned-legit-businessman Packy Paragon. Already torn up by the disappearance of Velda, his beloved secretary, Mike Hammer carves a brutal path for vengeance. Drinking heavily, his relationships fraying, his behavior self-destructive, Hammer has to track down Paragon’s black book, with the names of every corrupt official in town. With deception everywhere, and a whole host of reasons to want the ledger, Hammer has to pull himself together and solve the case before all hell breaks loose.

Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the exotic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Richard remains a dazed passenger in the case until things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hen...and you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens!

Cecil Younger never thought it would come to this: providing surveillance for a chicken coop being raided by a fowl thief. But things have not exactly been breaking right lately for the Alaskan P.I. The logical thing to do? Take a vacation, of course. Well, it's not exactly a vacation. Younger has been paid to investigate a doctor aboard a luxurious first-class cruise ship up the Alaskan coast. Except passengers are dying. Now Younger finds himself trapped on a ship of fools with a murderer who is leaving a trail of well-to-do passengers in his wake...and leaving evidence pointing an accusing finger at Cecil!

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?

Gus Murphy and his girlfriend, Magdalena, are put in harm's way when Gus is caught up in the distant aftershocks of heinous crimes committed decades ago in Vietnam and Russia. Gus' ex-priest pal, Bill Kilkenny, introduces him to a wealthy businessman anxious to have someone look more deeply into the brutal murder of his granddaughter. Though the police already have the girl's murderer in custody, they have been unable to provide a reason for the killing.

Jake Boulder’s help is requested when his friend’s family is crucified and burned.

When a woman’s body is discovered, Boulder realises the murders have something unusual in common. After a young couple is snatched, the case takes a more brutal turn. Gruesome footage is sent to the major US news outlets; the pressure to find those responsible mounts. With the authorities against him, can Boulder catch the killer?

This entry in Carolyn Haines' best-selling "Bones" series finds Sarah Booth Delaney, a southern belle with a penchant for amateur sleuthing, back on the case. When black pianist Ivory Keys is murdered, Zinnia, Mississippi, divides along racial lines. The prime suspect is Scott Hampton, Key's protege, who is rich and white. Sarah is hired to prove Scott's innocence, but to do so, she'll have to navigate some treacherous waters.

When a local woman begins searching for a couple she hasn't seen since the 1960s, Redwood Cove Bed and Breakfast manager Kelly Jackson and the crime-solving group the Silver Sentinels are quick to help out. They're also quick to guess that they're in over their heads after the woman is found dead beside the body of a Greek fortune teller - and a fellow Sentinel gets attacked.

Max Freeman's old life ended on a night that will haunt him forever. The night he killed a twelve-year-old child in self-defense in a Philadelphia shootout. The night he stopped being a cop. Now he lives a solitary existence on the edge of the Florida Everglades, where he answers to no one but the demons that eat away at his conscience. When he finds the corpse of a child beside an ancient river and another child goes missing, all eyes turn to Freeman.

Meet Sarah Booth Delaney...an unconventional Southern belle whose knack for uncovering the truth is about to make her the hottest detective in Zinnia, Mississippi...if it doesn't make her the deadest. No self-respecting lady would allow herself to end up in Sarah Booth's situation. Unwed, unemployed, and over 30, she's flat broke and about to lose the family plantation. Not to mention being haunted by the ghost of her great-great-grandmother's nanny, who never misses an opportunity to remind her of her sorry state.

Strictly speaking, Lew Archer is only supposed to dig up the dirt on a rich man's suspicious soon-to-be son-in-law. But in no time at all, Ross Macdonald's private eye is following a trail of corpses from the citrus belt to Mazatlan. And then there is the zebra-striped hearse and its crew of beautiful, sunburned surfers, whose path seems to keep crossing the son-in-law's - and Archer's - in this powerful, fast-paced novel of murder on the California coast.

When her dreams of rising through the Accra police ranks like her late father crash around her, 26-year-old Emma Djan is unsure what will become of her career. Through a sympathetic former colleague, Emma gets an interview with a private detective agency that takes on cases of missing persons, theft, and infidelity. Meanwhile, Gordon Tilson, a middle-aged widower in Washington, DC, has found solace in an online community after his wife's passing. Through the support group, he's even met a young Ghanaian widow he's come to care about.

The Warden Morgan has been accused of treason against the Wizards of the White Council - and there's only one, final punishment for that crime. He's on the run, wants his name cleared, and needs someone with a knack for backing the underdog. Someone like Harry Dresden....

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.

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.

A deranged, derelict, crazed Vietnam vet has been arrested for gunning down successful young lawyer Glenn Holtzmann at a corner phone booth on 11th Avenue—and the suspect's brother wants unlicensed private investigator Matthew Scudder to prove the madman innocent. But Scudder's curiosity and dedication are leading him to dark, unexplored places in his own heart…and to passions and secrets that could destroy everything he loves. In this unmerciful metropolis, no one is truly innocent—including Matthew Scudder.

When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days - as he has done before - and she wants Strike to find him and bring him home. But as Strike investigates, he discovers that Quine's disappearance is no coincidence. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published, it would ruin lives - meaning that almost everyone in his life would have motives to silence him.

Leopoldo Estuardo, detective retirado, es contactado por Inés Polti para que investigue el asesinato de su hermano. Estuardo se hace cargo de la investigación de Jerasmus Polti, un reconocido multimillonario, cuyo presunto asesino confeso es David Polti, su hermano psicópata. Con la ayuda de Nina, su centenial asistente, el investigador tendrá que interrogar a los testigos, hacer sus pesquisas y detectar las pistas y mentiras, sólo a través de una pantalla.

Rick Riordan’s first book in the Tres Navarre series, Big Red Tequila hit the mystery market like a Texas tornado. Readers couldn’t get enough of its hero’s offbeat combination of academic degrees, tai chi skills, and nose for danger. When the second adventure, Widower’s TwoStep, was published, it quickly earned an Edgar Award.

Leo Maxwell thinks he's found a career-making case when a mysterious woman nearly runs him down, then appears at his office to hire him to defend her brother on a murder charge. One problem: Leo hasn't actually met the client when he sets out to investigate what seems like a hot tip on a burgeoning scandal in the Oakland Police Department. When he presents evidence of deep-set corruption in the Department to the District Attorney's office, he quickly learns that all is not as it seems, beginning with Leo's client and the alluring woman who hired him.