Comedy Crime Fiction

Early in July, Northern Nevada’s senior Internal Revenue Service agent, Ronald Soranden - disliked by every agent in the Reno IRS office - vanished without a trace. In September, he makes a dramatic reappearance, of sorts. His skull - stripped clean and white - is dropped through the slashed top of a Mustang convertible. The vehicle belongs to Lucy Landry, PI Mortimer Angel’s gorgeous young assistant now working with him on a seemingly unrelated embezzlement case. But Mort is a former IRS field agent in Reno.

Andy Destra is a mostly honest cop in the most notoriously corrupt and crime-ridden city in America: Auction City. After discovering explosive information that reveals corruption within the highest levels of the police department, Andy is kicked off the force, framed, and disgraced, left to wage a lonely one-man crusade against conspiracies he can't prove.

Der Richter, dein Henker. Als junger Student träumte Siggi Buckmann davon, die Welt ein Stück gerechter zu machen. Als alter Hase im Richteramt schiebt er nur noch Dienst nach Vorschrift. In den Behörden regiert die Bürokratie, und sämtliche Urteile, die Siggi fällt, werden in Berufungsverfahren wieder aufgehoben. Wozu sich also Mühe machen? Doch als ein Obdachloser ums Leben kommt, ohne dass die Verantwortlichen zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden, beginnt Siggi, die Dinge anders zu betrachten. Vielleicht ist die Arbeit im Justizapparat ja doch zu etwas gut.

Who hasn't dreamed of one day ruling your own country? Along with great power comes unlimited influence, control, admiration, and often wealth. How to Be a Dictator will teach you the tricks of the trade - how to rise to the top and stay in power, and how to enjoy the fruits of your excellence.

Maeve has everything. A high-powered job, a beautiful home and a string of uncomplicated one-night encounters. She’s also an addict - a functioning alcoholic with a dependence on sex and an insatiable appetite for killing men. When she can’t find a support group to share her obsession, she creates her own. And Psychopaths Anonymous is born. Friends of Maeve. Now in a serious relationship, Maeve wants to keep the group a secret. But not everyone in the group adheres to the rules.

In the seaport city of New London, Connecticut, newcomer Connor Raposo has just witnessed a gruesome motorcycle accident on Bank Street. At least he thinks it was an accident. But then he sees a familiar man - who else would wear an Elvis pompadour in this day and age? - lurking around the crime scene. Where does Connor know him from? And why does everyone he knows keep showing up dead?

Lew Fonesca is still a freelance process server, still has his office behind a Dairy Queen in Sarasota, and is still the friend of the poor and outcast. Now, he has two more cases he doesn't want, cases that will lead unerringly to the discovery of murder.

When builder Mark Poynter discovers a murder on his worksite all of his financial problems suddenly seem a lot closer to home: was this a warning his debts are overdue? Suspected of being the killer and worried at being the intended victim, the murder only makes Mark's money problems worse, leading him to turn to the local villain, Hamlet, who has his own unique repayment plan in mind for Mark. When two more deaths plunge him even further into debt, Mark finds himself faced with a choice - help the police and clear his name or help the villain and clear his debt.

Mary Shields is a moody, acerbic probation officer dealing with some of Glasgow’s worst cases, and her job is on the line. Liam Macdowall was imprisoned for murdering his wife, and he’s published a series of letters to the dead woman, in a book that makes him an unlikely hero - and a poster boy for Men’s Rights activists. Liam is released on licence into Mary’s care, but things are far from simple. Mary develops a poisonous obsession with Liam and his world, and when her son and Liam’s daughter form a relationship, Mary will stop at nothing to impose her own brand of justice.

Ex-professional baseball player Jake Longly adamantly refuses to work for his father, wanting no part of Ray's PI world. He prefers to hang out at his beachfront bar and chase bikinis along the sugary beaches of Gulf Shores, Alabama. But Ray can be persuasive, so Jake finds himself staking out the home of wealthy Barbara Plummer, a suspected adulteress.

You won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, before you took the plunge and bought it. But all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he has the keys to them all.

Alvie Knightly flees Sicily for a suite at the Ritz after her not-so-playful sibling rivalry ends in murder. Beautiful, spoiled Beth may be gone, but Alvie's discovering what happens when you steal your twin's identity. Especially now that Beth's body has been found. The police aren't the only ones Alvie has to worry about. Her hot new boyfriend has vanished, along with all of their stolen riches. But Alvie has never shied away from a challenge. She pursues the traitor to Rome in a life-or-death game of cat and mouse. Can she get revenge before her own crimes catch up with her?

An old enemy seeking revenge sends James Flynn back around the bend and into a wild adventure even more deranged than his last one. Once again he believes that his psychiatric hospital is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill. With the help of Sancho, his reluctant sidekick, Flynn confronts a mysterious new adversary just as unhinged as he is and far more deadly. The entire planet is in danger, and the only one who can save it is someone no one believes.

In seventy-two hours, a blockbuster expose will reveal Victoria Stevens's multibillion-dollar startup as a massive fraud. And Victoria has gone missing. Has she faked her death, leaving her husband, Guy Sarvananthan, to face the fallout—and potential jail time? Should Guy flee to his native Sri Lanka, an outcast and a failure? Or embrace denial? Opting for the latter, he takes the corporate jet to a private Caribbean island, where the 0.0001% have gathered to decide which one of the world's biggest problems to "eradicate forever."

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to experience - and live through - their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout”, he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt.

A palm reader notifies Lord Arthur that murder is in his future. But not his murder - he’s the murderer. This really throws a wrench into his wedding plans, for Lord Arthur is soon to be married to the most beautiful lady in London. In fact he loves her so much, he decides to postpone the wedding until his business is done. Now, for a tasteful homicide....

What would it take to lure a serious young newswoman from a respectable New England paper to the most notorious supermarket tabloid in America? The call of journalistic adventure? How about a promise of a salary that's triple what she's making? En route to her new job at the Weekly Galaxy, Sara Joslyn stumbles across a bloody corpse in a Buick Riviera. A big story? Not at this paper. The problem is compounded when the dead man vanishes, Buick and all.

Veranix Calbert leads a double life. By day, he’s a struggling magic student at the University of Maradaine. At night, he spoils the drug trade of Willem Fenmere, crime boss of Dentonhill and murderer of Veranix’s father. He’s determined to shut Fenmere down. With that goal in mind, Veranix disrupts the delivery of two magical artifacts meant for Fenmere's clients, the mages of the Blue Hand Circle. Using these power-filled objects in his fight, he quickly becomes a real thorn in Fenmere's side.

Existential noir meets absurd comedy when a young man reluctantly enlists as source material for an art project. Stanley had known it was a mistake to accept his uncle Lech's offer to apartment-sit in Prague - he'd known it was one of Lech's proposals, a thinly veiled setup for some invasive, potentially dangerous performance art project. But whatever Lech had planned for Stanley, it would get him to Prague and maybe offer a chance to make things right with T after his failed attempt to propose.

The night after her father's funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn't know it, but it's not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.