Hard Crime

Ex-Army criminal investigator Rachel Hatch is a drifter. No home. No commitments. Until her sister's drowning drags her back to the town she left 15 years ago. Convinced her sister's death was no accident, Hatch partners with the local sheriff, Dalton Savage, to uncover the truth. Every answer unlocks another question, and as the investigation begins to unravel, Hatch and Savage find their lives on the line. Hatch is forced to use her special set of skills - forged on the field of combat - to learn the truth about her sister and bring those responsible to justice.

Detective John Stone of the NYPD has the best arrest record in the 43rd precinct. But he’s a dinosaur who belongs to another age. Detective Carmen Dehan has such a bad attitude that nobody at the precinct can stomach her. Captain Jennifer Cuevas wants them both out of the way and thinks they make a perfect pair. So she gives them the Cold Cases file–the cases nobody gives a damn about.

Sydney private investigator Gary Maddox is asked to find a missing accountant. He doesn't expect any trouble. After all, the guy is just an bean counter. But he's dead wrong. Powerful men have dispatched a posse of thugs to kill the ledger lurker. Gary is soon counting bodies and trying not to become a ugly statistic.

After a brutal day investigating a quadruple homicide, Detective Hoke Moseley settles into his room at the un-illustrious Eldorado Hotel and nurses a glass of brandy. With his guard down, he doesn't think twice when he hears a knock on the door. The next day, he finds himself in the hospital, badly bruised and with his jaw wired shut. He thinks back over 10 years of cases, wondering who would want to beat him into unconsciousness, steal his gun and badge, and most importantly, make off with his prized dentures.

America's favorite vampire detective is back! Samantha Moon, the vampire private investigator we all know and love, is sent on her most daring mission yet—back in time to the Titanic. With her unique abilities and detective skills, Sam’s tasked with recovering a mysterious artifact lost in the ship’s final moments. But time travel isn’t exactly smooth sailing, and the past holds dangers Sam never expected. Navigating the Titanic’s grandeur, secrets, and a ticking clock, she must stay sharp to complete her mission before history repeats itself. Full of twists, turns, mystery, and a...

Stark Justice follows the adventures of a retired police detective who travels around the country in an RV - looking for trouble that often finds him first. Like a lot of men in his profession, he had a well-developed plan for his retirement. The RV was always part of it, his wife was the one who suggested it and she helped pick out the model down to the upholstery. But she died before he put his papers in; his only consolation was they had taken a weekend trip in the camper before she passed. She knew him, and made him swear he would not sell it, that he would go and live the life he ...

Homicide Detective J. P. Beaumont had little to go on: a body, definitely male and decidedly dead, with strange little puncture wounds.

It’s fire season, and the hills of Los Angeles are burning. When police and fire department personnel rush door to door in a frenzied evacuation effort, they discover the week-old corpse of an apparent suicide. But the gunshot victim is less gruesome than what they find in his lap: a photo album of seven brutally murdered young women - one per year, for seven years. And when the suicide victim is identified as a former suspect in one of the murders, the news turns Elvis Cole’s world upside down.

Philip Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

When Holly's wedding festivities are shattered by a brutal robbery, she vows to find the culprits. With nothing to go on but the inexplicable killing of an innocent bystander, Holly discovers evidence that leads her into the midst of a clan whose members are as mysterious as they are zealous. Holly's father, Ham, a retired army master sergeant, is her ticket into their strange world.

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his 16-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no".

Marine biologist Doc Ford is spending two easy weeks on luxurious Guava Key compiling data. But when two young women at the resort are attacked, Doc comes to their rescue. In an instant, he is pulled into an international plan of revenge that becomes more deadly with each passing hour. Now, Doc isn’t counting fish--he’s adding up his chances for survival.

John is a good-looking white guy in his late twenties who thoroughly enjoys his independence as a single man in Chicago, where he lives and works. He spends most of his nights doing small package deliveries in the city, which is a perfect job for someone who has an eye for attractive men. After all, in a big city, there are men to be found. John, a very outgoing person, has had great success in getting to know more than one man's share of attractive men. Cruising through a Little Village neighborhood one night, he sees a handsome, well-dressed Latino who is apparently panhandling in front ...

Frank Machianno is a late-middle-aged ex-surf bum who runs a bait shack on the San Diego waterfront. An affable Italian with a love of people and life, he's a stand-up businessman, devoted father, and a beloved fixture in the community. He's also a hit man - specifically, a retired hit man. Back in the day when he was one of the most feared members of the West Coast Mafia, he was known as Frankie Machine.

Spenser earned his degree in the school of hard knocks, so he is ready when a Boston university hires him to recover a rare, stolen manuscript. He is hardly surprised that his only clue is a radical student with four bullets in his chest. The cops are ready to throw the book at the pretty blond coed whose prints are all over the murder weapon but Spenser knows there are no easy answers. He tackles some very heavy homework and knows that if he doesn't finish his assignment soon, he could end up dead.

Eddie Ankin is back in a white-knuckle thriller that thrusts you into the dark corners of Hollywood—and doesn’t let you breathe until the final page.” After a shootout in Beverly Hills nearly claims the life of an Academy Award–winning actress, ex-Marine and Hollywood stuntman Eddie Ankin is thrust into a dangerous mystery that stretches from the Sunset Strip to Lompoc Federal Penitentiary. As he struggles to protect a woman whose star power can’t shield her from a lethal predator, Eddie soon discovers the threats aren’t just on the streets—they’re embedded in a system that ...

Hard Truths is an 85,000-word collection of interviews with the crime genre's most accomplished writers. As both an award-winning journalist and one of the most acclaimed crime writers of recent times Tony Black is uniquely placed to cross-examine crime fiction's bestselling authors. Names like Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh, Andrew Vachss and William McIlvanney reveal the secrets of their craft in a series of interviews conducted over the last five years. Black takes an often no-holds-barred approach and pushes friendships to the limit as he teases out the truth on subjects as diverse as ...

Commissario Guido Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nursing sister who has had five patients unexpectedly die and decides to leave her convent. In the course of his inquiries, Brunetti encounters an unusual cast of characters but discovers nothing that seems criminal. Is the nun simply creating a smoke screen to justify abandoning her vocation? Or has she stumbled onto something very real and very sinister - something that places her own life in imminent danger?

Kinjo Heywood is one of the New England Patriots’ marquee players - a hard-nosed linebacker who’s earned his reputation as one of the toughest guys in the league. When off-field violence repeatedly lands Heywood in the news, his slick agent hires Spenser to find the men who he says have been harassing his client.

George V. Higgins's seminal crime novel is a down-and-dirty tale of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston. When small-time gunrunner Eddie Coyle is convicted on a felony, he's looking at three years in the pen—that is, unless he sells out one of his big-fish clients to the DA. But which of the many hoods, gunmen, and executioners whom he calls his friends should he send up the river? Told almost entirely in crackling dialogue by a vivid cast of lowlifes and detectives, The Friends of Eddie Coyle is one of the greatest crime novels ever written.