Private Investigators Fiction

Ed Edwards is in the used-car business, a business built on adjusted odometers, extra-fine print, and the belief that "buyers better beware". Burdened by an aging, alcoholic mother constantly on his case to do something worthier of his lighter skin tone and dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed is ready to get out of the game. When Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss at the eponymous dealership Smiling Dave's sends him to repossess a Cadillac, Ed finally gets the chance to escape his miserable life.

New York Times best-selling author Max Allan Collins has won multiple Shamus Awards for his detective novels featuring Nathan Heller. The third book in his JFK trilogy, Ask Not finds Heller investigating a bizarre string of deaths among the witnesses to JFK’s assassination—and tracing blame to LBJ’s right-hand man.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, the Butcher of Zamosc. Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser is convinced he is right and engages attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Rosenzweig to justice.

One small handwritten letter, sent from a dark, remote corner of the planet and lost in the system for 60 years, is about to change the entire human race. Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow. He's an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. But this time, he can't.

Everybody loves a winner, and the Rabbs are major league. Marty is the Red Sox star pitcher, Linda the loving wife. She loves everyone except the blackmailer out to wreck her life. Is Marty throwing fast balls or throwing games? It doesn't take long for Spenser to link Marty's performance with Linda's past...or to find himself trapped between a crazed racketeer and an enforcer toting an M-16. America's favorite pastime has suddenly become a very dangerous sport, and one wrong move means strike three.

Chicago, 2018: Ole Henryks, a popular restauranteur, is set to be honored by the Danish/American Association for his many civic and charitable contributions. Frequently appearing on local TV, he is well known for his actions in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II - most consider him a hero. Britta Stein, however, does not. The 90-year-old Chicago woman levels public accusations against Henryks by spray-painting “Coward”, “Traitor”, “Collaborator”, and “War Criminal” on the walls of his restaurant.

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. But what drove a good man to cross the line? Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke may well find out. Clarke is tasked with the city’s most explosive case in years, an infamous cop, at the center of decades of misconduct, has gone missing. Finding him will expose not only her superiors, but her mentor John Rebus. And Rebus himself may not have her own interests at heart, as the repayment of a past debt places him in the crosshairs of both crime lords and his police brethren.

Some things are best left unsaid... Five months after the horrors that had terrified Buckinghamshire, DS Jack Townsend and the Specialist Crimes Unit are assigned the case of a man found dead of a suspected overdose. But when it is soon revealed that something more sinister is at play, Townsend and the SCU have to act fast.

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.

When his uncle dies, Liam Taggart reluctantly returns to his childhood home in Northern Ireland for the funeral—a home he left years ago after a bitter confrontation with his family, never to look back. But when he arrives, Liam learns that not only was his uncle shot to death, but that he’d anticipated his own murder: In an astonishing last will and testament, Uncle Fergus has left his entire estate to a secret trust, directing that no distributions be made to any person until the killer is found.

Welcome to Mae Pruett’s Los Angeles, where “Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.” As a “black-bag” publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the center of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks, and private security firms she calls “The Beast.” They protect the rich and powerful and depraved by any means necessary.

Cut loose from his former life at the coroner’s office, Clay Edison has set up shop as a private investigator. It’s steady, safe work. Until it isn’t. The trouble begins when a young man, tasked with managing his grandmother’s estate, hires Clay to examine some minor financial discrepancies. What starts off as a case of simple fraud rapidly explodes into a web of deception, an elaborate con game stretching back decades and involving countless victims. All the evidence points to a tiny town on California’s rugged, remote Lost Coast.

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.

The unlikely pair Tallus Domingo and Diem Krause find themselves together on a case, uncovering secrets they never expected. But doesn't everyone have skeletons in their closet?

May 1942 - Regan O'Reilly comes from a long line of police officers. She would have followed her father and brother into the Force, but women officers are rare and usually relegated to the status of social workers. Now she's a private investigator with her own agency and the freedom to live her life the way she wants. That is, until she meets widower Mark Harris and his delightful son, Patrick, who have plans of their own for Regan.

In this new mystery set in the Patty Hearst era of radical black nationalism and political abductions, a black ex-boxer self-named Uhuru Nolica, the leader of a revolutionary cell called Scorched Earth, has kidnapped Rosemary Goldsmith, the daughter of a weapons manufacturer, from her dorm at UC Santa Barbara. If they don't receive the money, weapons, and apology they demand, "Rose Gold" will die - horribly and publicly.

It is 1997, and someone is slaughtering young women in Burdon County, Arkansas. But no one in the Dirty South wants to admit it. In an Arkansas jail cell sits a former NYPD detective, stricken by grief. He is mourning the death of his wife and child, and searching in vain for their killer. Obsessed with avenging his lost family, his life is about to take a shocking turn.

Matthew Scudder and his wife, Elaine, talk of the night they met while listening to music in various places around their part of New York.

Twelve. Twelve of the deadliest beasts ever forged in the fires of hell have escaped onto our plane, and they want nothing more than to rip out the jugular of Charley Davidson and serve her lifeless, mangled body to Satan for dinner. So there's that. But Charley has more on her plate than a mob of testy hellhounds. For one thing, her father has disappeared, and the more she retraces his last steps, the more she learns he was conducting an investigation of his own, one that has Charley questioning everything she's ever known about him.

Private detective and new mom Kate Connolly is no stranger to solving crimes with a baby on her hip. But in just a few months, she’ll have three babies, and her to-do list has never been longer. When someone shoots rival PI Vicente Domingo, Kate jumps to take the case. Is the would-be murderer someone Vicente’s been investigating recently? Or does it have something to do with a shadowy secret from Vicente’s past?