Private Investigator Thriller

Sam Rockwell came home from the Second World War to work as a fledgling private investigator specializing in helping "Returns": recently deceased ghosts who've come back with unfinished business. Short on experience and long on the imitated swagger of the detectives found in his dog-eared collection of pulp fiction P.I. mysteries, the quick-witted Sam waits for his big break - and his chance to win the heart of Amelia, his Girl Friday. But when his no-nonsense father is murdered and becomes a Return himself, everything changes.

The case is that of a missing girl, last seen getting into a truck with a stranger before disappearing. Gwen has a reputation for finding those who are lost, but this time something is wrong. Her instincts are off, and every clue she uncovers only raises more doubts, not just about the missing girl and the circumstances of her disappearance, but also about the fragile safety Gwen’s created for her family.

When private detective Cooper "Coop" Harrington meets record label mogul Grayson Taylor at a swank gathering of country music artists and politicians he never imagines he'll be investigating his brutal murder less than twenty-four hours later. The suspects are plentiful. More than a handful of people could have wanted him dead. Retained by Taylor's widow, Coop works alongside his best friend and Chief of Detectives, Ben Mason. The investigation leads Coop and Ben to scandalous indiscretions, secrets, and hints of corruption that swirl in the midst of their pursuit of the killer.

“Chilling...satisfying...offers up tasty tidbits of San Francisco lore . . . [Russell] has a gift for dialogue, slyly using it to reveal character.”—New York Times Book ReviewSan Francisco P.I. Stuart Winter looks into the death of a young, deaf heiress who volunteered as a sign language instructor—for a gorilla who may have witnessed her murder. “Polished and provocative...a California mystery of the hard-boiled school...very well written, with a corking good plot and fine characters.”—Booklist “Remarkable...[hops] from avant-garde theater to a deaf school, from winos’ ...

Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there’s no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what’s in Bodine’s head.

Deputy Rileigh Bishop is no stranger to the darkness. For nearly twenty-five years after her sister's disappearance, she's been haunted by unsettling postcards, each marked with a smiley face. The latest one contains a single word: Home. Is it a hint… or a warning? When a bullet strikes her car and sends her careening into a river, Rileigh barely escapes with her life. Convinced that her sister's disappearance, the postcards, and the assassination attempt are tied together, Rileigh and Mitch tear into cold cases, exposing bones that were better left buried.

With a cheating boyfriend, a thankless career in waitressing, and her BA in English going to waste, Mira James jumps at the chance for a fresh start in rural Battle Lake, Minnesota. Right away she lands a job as a librarian, snags another as an on-call reporter for the weekly newspaper, and is swept off her feet by Jeff Wilson, a handsome archaeologist unearthing the town’s storied history. Moving here might be the best decision Mira’s ever made. Until she finds Jeff’s body between the library’s reference stacks.

Elvis Cole is hired to find a woman who’s disappeared, a seemingly ordinary case, until he learns the missing woman is an explosives expert and worked for a Defense Department contractor. Meanwhile, LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, track a fugitive to a house filled with explosives - and a dead body. As the two cases intertwine, they all find themselves up against shadowy arms dealers and corrupt officials, and the very woman they promised to save may be the cause of their own deaths.

Francesca "Franki" Amato is a straight-shooting rookie cop in Austin, Texas, until an embarrassing 911 call prompts her to take a job at her best friend’s PI agency in New Orleans. But Franki soon learns that solving crime in The Big Easy is no Bourbon Street party. Case in point, her first investigation involves the murder of a beautiful boutique manager who was strangled with a cheap yellow scarf, and her primary suspect is her client.

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.

A dog walker finds a human bone on lonely Salisbury Plain. DCI Mackenzie Jones investigates the grisly discovery but cannot explain how it ended up there. She contacts disgraced ex-detective Atticus Priest and the two of them trace the bone to a graveyard in the nearby village of Imber. But the village was abandoned after it was purchased by the Ministry of Defence to train the army, so why have bodies been buried in the graveyard since the church was closed?

Jay has never forgotten the photo once sent to him of his young fiancée - naked in the arms of another man. Now on his deathbed and convinced the photo was a fake, the hunt is on for a modern-day witchfinder. And Amos Walker is the man for the job.

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. Defending Colleen is the lawyer Moxie Castin, and working alongside him is the private investigator Charlie Parker, who senses the tale has another twist, one involving a husband too eager to accept his wife’s guilt.

A woman with a murky past who kills herself - or was it murder? A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt who thinks he can beat the system. A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments. A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racking up millions from stolen goods. A wandering husband, rich and ruthless. A dirty cop so entrenched on the force he is immune to exposure. A sinister gangster, conscienceless and brutal. A lonely widower mourning the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss.

Ever since a car accident left reporter Ben Morrison with amnesia, he’s been trying to rebuild a future as he puts together the pieces of his past. With the help of PI Jessie Cole, he’s getting closer. But few who remember Ben’s troubled childhood want to talk. And those who do—including his father, imprisoned for a shocking crime—are stirring disturbing memories given up for dead. Then Jessie is sidetracked by a surveillance request from a suspicious husband. An ordinary case, until the cheating wife and lover are found murdered.

January 1910. A journalist has been killed in a suspicious blaze. Everything points to a group of suffragettes, but the apparent culprit insists she is innocent. When Lady Hardcastle receives a letter from a suffragette requesting her urgent help, the retired spy turned sleuth knows only she stands between an accused young woman and the gallows. Evidence at the scene makes Lizzie Worrel’s innocence difficult to believe, and with the police treating it as an open-and-shut case of arson, Lady Hardcastle faces a barrage of resistance as she tries to dig out the truth.

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.

Every morning Boone Daniels is out with the Dawn Patrol: four men and one woman as single-minded about surfing as he is, or nearly. They have real jobs; Boone works as a P.I. just enough to keep himself in fish tacos and in the water. But Boone is also obsessed with the unsolved case of a young girl named Rain who was abducted while he was with the San Diego police.

For Ali Reynolds, the first Christmas without her father is riddled with grief and uncertainty. And with her husband and founding partner of High Noon Enterprises, B. Simpson, preoccupied by an upcoming New Year’s trip to London, she is ready for a break. But when Stu Ramey barges into her home with grave news about a serious—and suspicious—accident on the highway to Phoenix involving B.’s car, things reach a breaking point. At the hospital, a groggy, post-op B. insists that Ali take his place at a ransomware conference in London, as troubles brimming around High Noon come to light

In the last years of the Cold War, policy and trust for the Russians have led to disarmament treaties and hope for a new beginning. But peace is not yet within grasp. An entire American town has been wiped off the map: not by nuclear strike, but rather a space-borne particle cannon capable of reducing the entire nation to dust in hours. But who pulled the trigger? Was it the Russians, making a final bid for world domination? Or was it a third power - some aspiring conqueror hoping to pit the superpowers against each other? It’s up to Blaine McCracken to find out.