Private Investigators Mysteries

Cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington tracks a mobster hiding deep within the witness protection program in this new thriller in the New York Times best-selling series - with a little help from beautiful Florida police chief Holly Barker.

1896. A new client at Baker Street claims he’s being threatened via the new art of the moving image. Eadweard Muybridge, pioneer of motion picture projection, believes his life is in danger. Twice he has been almost run down in the street by the same mysterious carriage, and moreover, disturbing alterations have been made to his lecture slides. These are closely guarded, yet just before each lecture an unknown hand has defaced images depicting Muybridge himself, which he has discovered, to his horror, only as he projects them to his audience.

Intrepid hero Cork O'Connor faces the most harrowing mission of his life when a charter plane carrying his wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies. Months after the tragedy, two women show up on Cork's doorstep with evidence that the pilot of Jo's plane was not the man he claimed to be. It may not be definitive proof, but it's a ray of light in the darkness.

Sid Halley had one good hand and another made of metal. Five hundred pounds of horse had landed on him, directly ending his career as a brilliant jockey - and indirectly ending his marriage to the woman he loved. He had become a private investigator, quite a good one, though his new life could never erase the haunting memories of his past glories.

In Maine, Colleen Clark stands accused of the worst crime a mother can commit: the abduction and possible murder of her child. Everyone—ambitious politicians in an election season, hardened police, ordinary folk—has an opinion on the case, and most believe she is guilty. But most is not all. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist.

An eighty-year-old man is found murdered in his home. His age and standing in the community makes finding his killer difficult–why would anyone harm an elderly man? What threat could he possibly be to anyone? With no apparent motive, DS George Cross canvases the community for potential suspects but the man was known as generous, charitable, community-minded. Each interview about who the man is muddies the picture further. So Cross decides to look for who he was–revealing a past that is far less honourable than his present . . .

First appearing in print in 1890, the character of Sherlock Holmes has now become synonymous worldwide with the concept of a super sleuth. His creator, Conan Doyle, imbued his detective hero with intellectual power, acute observational abilities, a penchant for deductive reasoning and a highly educated use of forensic skills. Indeed, Doyle created the first fictional private detective who used what we now recognize as modern scientific investigative techniques.

DS Lucas Walker is off duty. He's supposed to be showing his little sister Grace the Australian outback, on her visit from Boston, but instead they're headed out bush- where Walker's cousin has been mining for boulder opal. Something seemed off when Walker heard that Blair wanted to get out of Kanpara, so he and Grace are en route to bring him home to Caloodie. But Kanpara is in Channel Country, and a major flood is on the way.

Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend, Dr John Watson, have been hired by actor George Reynolds. George wants them to find out why the audience who comes to see him perform every night are the same people, only wearing disguises. Is something sinister going on and, if so, what? Meanwhile, Holmes’ archenemy, Professor James Moriarty, is having problems of his own. Implicated in the murder of a gang leader, Moriarty and his second, Moran, must go on the run from the police in order to find out who is behind the set-up.

Sue Grafton's X: Perhaps her darkest and most chilling novel, it features a remorseless serial killer who leaves no trace of his crimes. Once again breaking the rules and establishing new paths, Grafton wastes little time identifying this sociopath. The test is whether Kinsey can prove her case against him before she becomes his next victim.

Rachel Hatch closes a major chapter in her life. A new one begins with an offer from an old friend. This offer puts Hatch at odds. The agency responsible for her father’s murder and who nearly took her life in the mountains of Colorado is now offering her a job opportunity. Lives hang in the balance as Hatch sets out to honor her code. She quickly finds that things are not what they seem in the small town of Breakneck, Alaska. Hatch finds an ally in the most unlikely of places.

Dying billionaire Trevor Stone hires private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaroto find his missing daughter. Grief-stricken over the death of her mother and the impending death of her father, Desiree Stone has been missing for three weeks. So has the first investigator Stone hired to find her: Jay Becker, Patrick's mentor.

"Si les vieilles dames se mettent à buter les jeunots, si les doyens du troisième âge se shootent comme des collégiens, si les commissaires divisionnaires enseignent le vol à la tire à leurs petits-enfants, et si on prétend que tout ça c'est ma faute, moi, je pose la question : où va-t-on ?"

Hugo Hawksworth is on the tail of rogue Cold War agents at a top-secret government facility, while back home at Selchester Castle they're awaiting the arrival of the new earl - an American, the long-lost son of the murdered Lord Selchester.

Sinclair Rutherford is a young Seattle cop with a taste for the finer things. Doing menial tasks and getting hassled by superiors he doesn't respect are definitely not "finer things". Good police work and bad luck lead him to crack a case that changes quickly from a career-making break into a high-profile humiliation when footage of his pursuit of the suspect - wildly inappropriate murder weapon in hand - becomes an Internet sensation.

Two dead bodies changed the course of my life that fall. One of them I knew and the other I'd never laid eyes on until I saw him in the morgue. The first was a local PI of suspect reputation. He'd been gunned down near the beach at Santa Teresa. It looked like a robbery gone bad. The other was on the beach six weeks later. He'd been sleeping rough. Probably homeless. No identification. A slip of paper with Millhone's name and number was in his pants pocket. The coroner asked her to come to the morgue to see if she could ID him.

The dual forces of good and evil take center stage in the fourth installment in the Jimmy McSwain Files, one that finds the tortured, sexy detective battling an unforeseen enemy: happiness. Yet murder will soon rear its desperate chill, hurtling Jimmy into the highest society and the lowest of lives.

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.

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro's latest client is a prominent Boston psychiatrist running scared from a vengeful Irish mob. The private investigators know something about cold-blooded retribution. Born and bred on the mean streets of blue-collar Dorchester, they've seen the darkness that lives in the hearts of the unfortunate.

Call it Kinsey Millhone in bad company. Call it a mystery without a murder, a treasure hunt without a map, a quest novel with truly mixed-up motives. Call it the return of Kinsey as a bad girl, quick-witted and quicksilvery, poking her nose into everybody's dirty laundry as she joins up with a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde in an Our Gang comedy that will take her halfway across the country and leave her with a major headache and an empty bank balance.