Private Investigators Mysteries

Summer's end approaches, and it's time for the Harvest Festival, the last big event of the season, held by Mamie Fish, wife of millionaire railroad tycoon Stuyvesant Fish, at their grand "cottage", Crossways. The crowning jewel of the evening will be the guest of honor, Prince Otto of Austria. As acting editor-in-chief of the Newport Messenger, Emma must attend the Harvest Festival. The next morning, the prince is found dead in the side garden at Crossways, making it clear a murderer crashed the party.

Sam Acquillo has spent most of his time in the Hamptons hanging out with the other half of the moneyed wonderland cops and bartenders, carpenters, store clerks, and firemen. He couldn't care less about the concerns of the one percent, until his best friend, a certified billionaire, is dragged into a high-profile death investigation. For some, there is no power without prestige, and no prestige that can't be bought. The rich can achieve a level of depravity and hate both invisible, and incomprehensible, to the rest of us.

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust.

Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni attends a course hosted by the local chamber of commerce entitled “Where Is Your Business Going?”. But rather than feeling energized, he comes back in low spirits, unsure how to grow the already venerable and successful Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Then an old friend from school approaches him about a new business venture that could be just the ticket. When it turns out he will need to mortgage his property in order to pursue this endeavor, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi wonder what this will mean for his current business - as well as their own.

Tandis que les villageois de Three Pines se réjouissent déjà des feux d'artifice du Nouvel An, Armand Gamache doit interrompre ses vacances en famille pour répondre à une affectation en apparence anodine : assurer la sécurité d'une professeure de statistiques lors d'une conférence prononcée à l'université voisine. Perplexe, le chef des homicides de la Sûreté se renseigne sur Abigail Robinson et découvre une femme au discours si dangereux qu'il supplie la chancelière d'annuler son allocution. Colette Roberge refuse, invoquant la liberté de l'enseignement, et l'accuse de lâcheté intellectuelle.

Un squelette dans le placard, c’est classique. Mais un cadavre décharné dans la penderie d’un luxueux manoir de la métropole, c’est plutôt inhabituel. Le comte de Clairvaux, qui y vit discrètement dans le respect des traditions familiales, se passerait bien de ce genre de publicité.

Private investigator Thomas Austin is enjoying a relaxing holiday vacation in picturesque Port Townsend, Washington, accompanied by an intriguing new friend. But his tranquility is shattered when the nearby community of Mystery Bay is rocked by the death of a revered musician at an infamous counterculture festival: The Rabbit Hole.

Five years after the crashof TWA Flight 800, the government has declared it a result of mechanical failure. But John Corey, an ex-NYPD detective who is now a contract agent with the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is persuaded by Kate Mayfield, his wife and task force partner, that the case deserves a second look.

A year after The Wizard of Oz's smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets have been left standing on a soundstage in the depths of the MGM back lot in case the studio greenlights a sequel. But that doesn't explain what Judy Garland is doing there - or why she finds a Munchkin in full costume, lying facedown with a knife buried in his back.

In the days of Marco Polo, men risked their lives for spices. And in an age when black pepper was so valuable that it was sold one peppercorn at a time, there was no spice more valuable than the legendary Ko Feng. Known as the Celestial Spice, it supposedly vanished five centuries ago, and its name lives on only as culinary myth. But now a sack of it has turned up in New York City, and the leading experts of world cuisine will kill for a taste.

The darkest and most disturbing case report from the files of Kinsey Millhone, Y begins in 1979, when four teenage boys from an elite private school sexually assault a 14-year-old classmate - and film the attack. Not long after, the tape goes missing, and the suspected thief, a fellow classmate, is murdered. In the investigation that follows, one boy turns state's evidence, and two of his peers are convicted. But the ringleader escapes without a trace.

Lauren, Drew, and Rob go on a relaxing vacation that turns into a nightmare. As Lauren sunbathes by the lake, she sees the man from next door lugging something heavy into a boat. The night before, Lauren thought she heard a woman screaming. What is their rich and famous neighbor hiding? Women are vanishing in this beautiful corner of Tennessee, full of woods and water. Detective Chris Bailey has his hands full. He’s investigating a drowning from last summer. The woman was never identified. But a pattern is emerging.

The city is in a state of shock over the fate of two hometown heroes: Eagles starting quarterback Archie Hughes, and his even more famous wife, Grammy-winning singer Francine Hughes. One spouse is murdered. The other is suspect #1. Even before the case hits the courtroom, it’s the hottest ticket in town. For the defense: Cooper Lamb, private investigator to the stars. For the prosecution: Veena Lion, a sleuth so bright she’s got to wear shades. Between them, they know every secret in Philadelphia. Together, they prove how two wrongs can make a right. They are Lion & Lamb.

Poet Kitty Clark has waited her entire life to see a total eclipse of the sun. News of an impending eclipse thrills her until she learns it will be visible only from Nantucket, where her ex-lover Joe Green recently moved with his new wife. Unable to resist the astronomical lure, she flies from Boston and makes her way to an isolated lighthouse, hoping to avoid Joe. The eclipse itself is overwhelming. When the sun returns a few minutes later, Kitty is standing over the bloodied body of Mrs. Joe Green, claiming "the moon did it."

When Carlotta Carlyle agrees to help a mysterious woman locate her missing immigration card, she doesn't anticipate any complications. But then her client disappears, and the immigration card in question turns up on the dead body of another woman. Suddenly, Carlotta is plunged into the desperate world of illegal aliens, the cold-hearted immigration agents who hunt them down, and the deadly “coyotes” who bring the innocents across the border.

Tension runs high in this working-class neighborhood as a hunger strike to protest strict immigration laws escalates among the Algerian immigrants. Aimée barely escapes death in a car bombing in this tale of terrorism and greed in the shadows of Paris.

The young girl lies in a ditch without a scratch on her - a white high school student stretched out dead in the black part of Atlanta. She was a rich girl from a cold family, too genteel for the neighborhood where she died, and only the baby in her belly suggests how she might have gotten there. For Detective Frank Clemons, the scene is far too familiar. Too close to how it was when he found his own daughter, dead in the woods by her own hand, her youthful beauty cruelly ravaged by depression. To hang on to sanity, he must do everything he can to find justice for the dead.

Ellery Queen returned to Wrightsville to solve the mystery of a rich man - believed poor - who died of "old age," a poor man - believed rich - who committed suicide, and a scholarly drunk who disappeared. Shortly it occurred to Queen that the puzzle had a pattern. A twisted mind was committing murder according to an old nursery rhyme! Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief…and to at least one person in town, the chief was Ellery Queen.

The story is not your typical murder mystery. The sleuth is not a detective, private eye, or lawyer. He's an ordinary guy with an extraordinary dog. Jacob Martin is trying to make the best of a divorce and mid-life crisis when he gets a call at two o'clock Sunday morning from his mother. His sister has been arrested for the murder of her fourth husband, and his father is near death. Thus begins an adventure that takes Jake and his golden retriever from their Colorado retreat to a backwater town in the Missouri Ozarks.

As Sam Acquillo tells us in the early part of Back Lash, "Not everyone gets to live their adult lives orbiting a central mystery." But that's how it's been for Sam, whose entire existence has been defined by a single horrific event. Now that event has reached out from the deep past, an unwanted visitor, and Sam is forced to unpack, like a Russian doll, secrets within secrets, each more ominous than the one before.