Private Investigators Fiction

Recipient of the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines enjoys a reputation as “queen of the cozies” ( Providence Journal-Bulletin). When P.I. Sarah Booth makes a bid for film stardom, she may land a chance to shoot on location in Costa Rica—or she may find herself in a whole heap of trouble.

Private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney and her friends are celebrating New Year's Eve at the party of the year, a smashing Winter White Garden party at the newly renovated King Cotton Boutique Hotel. It's a dazzling success, until Frangelica "Sister" McFee walks through the door. Sarah Booth knew Sister in college, before Sister became a best-selling author and moved to New York, and fame and fortune don't seem to have tempered her arrogance and cruelty.

Dr. Frank Hafner is an archaeologist working on excavating a new-found Native American temple site in the Mississippi Delta. He's also too handsome for his own good, and a bit of a flirt. Oddly enough, it's the first quality that gets him in trouble when he discovers the ritualistic murder of one of his archaeological crew. When Coleman Peters, Sheriff and Sarah Booth's boyfriend, takes Dr. Hafner in for questioning in the murder, the accused doctor hires Sarah Booth to clear his name.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

As Logan Martin begins his prison sentence for the brutal murder of his father, the eighteen-year-old’s aunt hires private investigator Teàrlach Paterson. She believes Logan is innocent and wants Teàrlach to uncover the truth. Teàrlach’s visit to the Martin family home yields two disturbing discoveries: a pentagram etched under the carpet in Logan's sister’s bedroom, and a link to the sinister deaths of their elderly neighbours—a journal with the same ominous symbol lies in the couple's home.

Other than the bullet lodged less than a centimeter from his heart, former Detroit police officer Alex McKnight thought he had put the nightmare of his partner's death and his own near-fatal injury behind him. After all, Maximilian Rose, convicted of the crimes, has been locked in the state pen for years. But in the small town of Paradise, Michigan, where McKnight has traded his badge for a cozy cabin in the woods, a murderer with Rose's unmistakable trademarks appears to be back to his killing ways.

When Lew Archer stops for a hitchhiker and finds a young man dying of a gunshot wound, he knows he has stumbled into a mess. In a matter of hours he is suspected by the law, hired by a target-shooting trucking magnate, and chasing a hijacked load of hooch and a band of sinners on the loose.

Vivian, a former reporter and a newlywed, doesn’t know what to do with herself after an incident with her husband forces her to question their partnership and her future. Yearning for the ocean air and a sense of home, she retreats to Tybee Island to clear her head and visit her Nana, a retired PI who now struggles with dementia. The phone rings: Catherine Grant, a housewife living in a private development nearby, woke up to find her husband and their baby girl missing, and she is desperate for help.

Sarah Booth Delaney is heartbroken: Her fiancé, Graf Milieu, has decided to move to Hollywood permanently, leaving their relationship in shambles. Sarah Booth has a perfect distraction, however, in the form of the Black and Orange Halloween ball her best friends are throwing in New Orleans. Sarah Booth plans to dance the night away to the swinging tunes of her old flame Scott Hampton's blues band. But just as the party gets going, Scott receives a mysterious message that threatens his life and the lives of his bandmates.

Private eye Fred Carver investigates the slaughter of an ex-cop, the murder of a man who was found stuffed to the gills with cocaine, and other crimes.

Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Claire Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.

Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son and an ageing Labrador, both at the discretion of his ex-partner, Julia. It’s picturesque, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes. Jackson's current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband for a suspicious wife, seems straightforward, but a chance encounter with a desperate man on a crumbling cliff leads him across a sinister network - and back into the path of someone from his past.

Egypt, 1926. Fiercely independent American Jane Wunderly has made up her mind: she won't be swept off her feet on a trip abroad. Despite her Aunt Millie's best efforts at meddling with her love life, the young widow would rather gaze at the Great Pyramids of Giza than into the eyes of a dashing stranger. Yet Jane's plans to remain cool and indifferent become ancient history in the company of Mr. Redvers, a roguish banker she can't quite figure out.

At the start of another pitiless winter, the wolves have come for the children of Keelut. Three children have been taken from this isolated Alaskan village, including the six-year-old son of Medora and Vernon Slone. Saken with grief and seeking consolation, Medora contacts nature writer and wolf expert Russell Core. Sixty years old, ailing in both body and spirit, and estranged from his daughter and wife, Core arrives in Keelut to investigate the killings.

Charlie Hills, former desk sergeant at Kings Lake Central, is in trouble. He hasn't told Smith, his old friend and sparring partner, but someone has, and now the two former policemen are about to embark on a difficult and potentially dangerous search for the truth. For one of them, it could be life-changing.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

Popular mystery author Carolyn Haines is the recipient of the prestigious Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, as well as the Harper Lee Award. In Greedy Bones, Sarah Booth Delaney returns to Dahlia House when a mysterious illness breaks out in her hometown. Sarah’s best friend Tinkie’s husband seems to be dying of the ailment, so Sarah must act fast to avoid a devastating loss.

Claire Keller would do anything to have a child. Unable to conceive, she's overjoyed when she and her husband bond with the five-year-old girl they adopt. But Claire's hopes for a perfect family shatter when her daughter stands before her covered in blood and prophesying death.... As the child exhibits more strange supernatural abilities, the frightened Kellers find themselves caught up in a dark plot. Hunted by a shadowy organization hell-bent on claiming the girl, the family is forced on the run.

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.

As the Great Blizzard of 1888 cripples the vast machinery that is New York City, heiress Prudence MacKenzie sits anxiously within her palatial Fifth Avenue home waiting for her fiance's safe return. But the fearsome storm rages through the night. With daylight, more than 200 people are found to have perished in the icy winds and treacherous snowdrifts. Among them is Prudence's fiancé - his body frozen, his head crushed by a heavy branch, his fingers clutching a single playing card, the ace of spades.