Private Investigators Fiction

Here, together for the first time, are the shorter works of best-selling author Jim Butcher - a compendium of cases that Harry and his cadre of allies managed to close in record time. The tales range from the deadly serious to the absurdly hilarious.

An idealist at heart, Scott Jarvis finds himself growing more and more disillusioned with police work. Assigned to what at first seems like a fairly mundane case to find a missing NASA engineer, he uncovers a plot that leads him into the dark underworld of organized crime and international intrigue. Just as he’s making real progress, Jarvis is pulled off the case and ordered to lay off or else....

Sharing lodging in the sleepy English village of Walmsley Parva has eased some of the financial strain on the two old school chums, but money is still tight in these years following the Great War. So when the local vicar - and pigeon-racing club president - approaches them with a private inquiry opportunity, the ladies accept. There's been a spot of bother: The treasurer has absconded with the club's funds and several prized birds. But when they visit the man's loft, they find their elusive quarry lying in white feathers and a pool of crimson blood - the only witnesses cooing mournfully.

Once a land of Pueblo dwellers, the town of San Geronimo Peak, New Mexico, is prime ski country. PI Howard Moon Deer and ex-cop Jack Wilder are headed there to meet their first client - a former US senator and the ski slope's owner. Instead, they find his body - and a murder case to solve.

"Investigation, Mediation, Vindication." That's how the Yellow Pages ad starts, and if it sounds like the sort of thing a drunk teenager might come up with . . . well, you'd only be wrong about the teenager part. John Smith owns San Diego's smallest private investigation firm, but he doesn't know the first thing about mediation. Or vindication.

Scott and Lisa are enjoying their first cruise on the new sailboat when a call from a potential client interrupts their weekend in Saint Petersburg. Lionel Argus is the owner of Destiny Cruises, a successful Florida-based gambling cruise line. He’s been receiving racial threats against his life, and he needs private investigator Scott Jarvis to find out who’s behind it.

A twisted tale of murder in the world of big-stakes bass fishing tournaments. Filled with ex-wives, evangelists, and an armed pit-bull, this is a story that could only be concocted by Carl Hiaasen, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and czar of Florida noir fiction.

India, 1837: William Avery is a young soldier with few prospects except rotting away in campaigns in India; Jeremiah Blake is a secret political agent gone native, a genius at languages and disguises, disenchanted with the whole ethos of British rule, but who cannot resist the challenge of an unresolved mystery.

A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case, but Sean Duffy isn’t easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of a distraction. So with detective constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim. The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once served in the U.S. military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles?

Accused of treason and stripped of his knighthood, Crispin Guest has survived on the gritty streets of London by reinventing himself as The Tracker, an investigator for hire who can locate lost objects and uncover secrets. When the merchant Nicholas Walcote hires Guest to investigate his young wife Philippa for adultery, he discovers an underground world of danger and dirty dealings. Philippa is indeed hiding something—but she's not the only one. Walcote himself is rumored to possess a holy relic so powerful that some would even kill for it.

When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you're squatting in your parents' old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can't afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It's not my real name, but it's the only one you're getting.

It started with a downed Nazi submarine and moved into the jungles of Nicaragua...now, the ultimate plan behind the deadly U-boat cargo and one man’s attempt to seize power in Central America teeters on the edge. All it takes is a single nudge to tip the balance.... Scott and Lisa are enjoying a sailing race when Jarvis is approached by a Miami business man. Ramon Tavares suspects that his fishing and shipping businesses are being used to smuggle cocaine into the country, and he needs private investigators Scott Jarvis and Lisa Gonzalez to discover who’s behind it.

How did former Chicago cop Jim McGill become the first PI to live in the White House? He married Patricia Darden Grant, the first woman to become a US president...not long after he solved the murder of her first husband. Winning an election was one thing. Finding work after moving to Washington was another. McGill decided to be his own boss and took out a private investigator's license. That wasn't a politically correct occupation, but then McGill refused to allow himself to be addressed as the First Gentleman. He nicknamed himself The President's Henchman.

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. Deeply traumatized by a shooting incident, Cass Raines resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency. She also plays chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton. When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby.

A former Medal of Valor winner, Minnesota detective Alexander Rupert is now under subpoena by a grand jury on suspicion of corruption. So when he's asked to look into the false identity of a car-accident victim named James Putnam, a man who in fact died 15 years earlier, Rupert sees a potentially big case and an opportunity to regain his respectability. But the investigation puts him in the path of "the Beast", the nom de guerre of Drago Basta, a cunning veteran of the Balkan wars.

1903. A darkness has descended on London. A series of grisly murders are uncovered, trophies taken, bodies arranged and soon there are whispers of Jack the Ripper’s return. A new client arrives at Baker Street seeking Sherlock Holmes’s help: Dr. Jekyll claims his friend has been wrongfully accused of the hideous crimes, a friend called Mr. Edward Hyde, whose very existence relies on a potion administered by the doctor himself. But the case becomes more complicated, more unsettling than simply proving Mr. Hyde’s innocence.

The tropical jungles of Central America teem with betrayal, lust, greed, and international intrigue that threaten to explode and take everything Scott Jarvis loves with them. With time running short and little to go on, Scott Jarvis must smash his way through the lies and mysteries and avoid death at every turn before Clay, his wife, and his three children become the first casualties in a bloody revolution!

Kendra Michaels is reluctant to help the FBI with the most recent case they've brought to her...until she hears the details: The body was found just blocks away from Kendra's condo. The man was carrying an envelope with Kendra's name on it, and inside was an SD card with what appears to be an innocuous video of a wedding reception. And just one week before the attempted delivery of this mysterious video, the groom in the video was murdered.

The beast came at night. Murdered the cop in his home. Tore his Rottweilers to pieces. And it's only the latest in a series of gruesome attacks. Overwhelmed, Houston PD is at a loss. But shape-shifter Michael Biörn isn't. Michael discerns the secret nature of the killer; a werewolf's handiwork is unmistakable. Werewolves move in packs, however. And the local pack is 40 members strong. But a young woman's life is at stake. And so, after centuries spent avoiding the wolves, Michael abandons his retreat to confront his ancestral enemies.

When a new client interrupts Scott and Lisa’s Christmas vacation, a simple missing-persons case rapidly balloons into a global mystery fraught with deadly peril. Mike Arkadi, computer programmer, has dropped off the face of the earth, and it turns out that he may be part of an international conspiracy to blow the global financial markets wide open. Now Scott must contend with multiple foreign intelligence agents who will stop at nothing to seize control of a powerful piece of software that could provide their home countries with immense power.