Private Investigators Fiction

A mansion, a title, and marriage to a wealthy Lord, Lady Eveline Cartwright has it all. Unfortunately, it's not enough to prevent her from being bludgeoned to death one night in the study of Merisham Lodge, the family's country estate in Derbyshire. Suspicion quickly falls on her ne'er-do-well son, Peter, but not everyone in the household is convinced of his guilt. Head kitchen maid Joan Hart and lady's maid Verity Hunter know that when it comes to a crime, all is not always as it seems.

When Lily Rowan doesn’t laugh at his jokes, Archie Goodwin knows something’s wrong. Her niece Noreen has been running around with Sparky Linville, a club-hopping bad boy who’s the terror of Manhattan nightlife, and the last time she went out with him, Noreen wasn’t herself when she came home. Springing into action, Goodwin waits for Linville outside of Morgana’s, a chrome-and-glass palace. They nearly come to blows, but Linville’s bodyguard intervenes, and Goodwin retreats to plan his next move. In the morning, Linville is dead, and Goodwin is the chief suspect.

Werebear shifter Annette Garsea is a caseworker for the Interspecies Placement Agency. When a selectively mute and freakishly strong teen werewolf is put in her custody, Annette has to uncover the young girl's secrets if she's to have any hopes of helping her. And not even the growling of a scruffy private investigator can distract her from her mission....

After 17-year-old Charlotte Kane, the beautiful, brilliant, and brooding daughter of a rich widower, disappears on a drunken New Years' Eve snowmobile ride, a raging blizzard soon snuffs out all search efforts. When her body is found during the spring thaw four months later, preliminary evidence implicates her ex-boyfriend: Ojibwe bad-boy Solemn Winter Moon. But then a second Charlotte Kane turns up dead, and Cork isn't sure of anything any more.

When Ginger Mitchell finds out her mother committed suicide, she drives her cherry-red SUV straight home to Portland. Murders are being passed off as suicides. College-aged women keep going missing. And then there's the troubling spate of mobsters who keep inviting her out to eat. Includes the first six novellas in the Roseland series, Home Is Where the Start Is, The Ruth Is Out There, The Body in the Pool, Amber Alert, Jane Dead, and Welcome to Roseland.

There are 96 names on the list. They are those of businessmen, judges, and senators - the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful. And they are all going to die. A man named Takahashi has hired the world’s finest assassins to eliminate these men in secrecy and style, crossing names off the list without raising any suspicion. And they are killing ahead of schedule. But someone has noticed the pattern of these seemingly unrelated deaths, and she knows enough to call Blaine McCracken.

Frances Wynn, the American-born Countess of Harleigh, enjoys more freedom as a widow than she did as a wife. After an obligatory year spent mourning her philandering husband, Reggie, she puts aside her drab black gowns, leaving the countryside and her money-grubbing in-laws behind. With her young daughter in tow, Frances rents a home in Belgravia and prepares to welcome her sister, Lily, arriving from New York - for her first London season.

Sydney Richardson's enjoying a rare night out in her hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, when she learns that one of her friends has been shot. Rick Sheffield thought he was staking out a drug deal; turns out he had a front-row seat to a million-dollar cash drop gone wrong. Meanwhile, at a construction site across town, a young vagrant is killed execution-style after spreading some serious wealth among his street friends. Sydney sees no reason to link the shootings, until the money disappears from the evidence locker.

Francesca Amaro moves back to her hometown of Cape Bay, Massachusetts, and takes over the family business, Antonia's Italian Cafe. She spends her days making delicious artisan cappuccinos - until she stumbles upon her neighbor's dead body. When the police discover Mr. Cardosi was poisoned, Francesca becomes a suspect. The victim's son, Matty, happens to be Francesca's old high school friend. Together they uncover the secrets of the locals in order to find the killer in their idyllic beach town.

This collection of short stories of Chet the dog, “the most lovable narrator in all of crime fiction” (Boston Globe), and his human partner, PI Bernie Little includes: "Upper Story," "The Iggy Papers," and "The Numbers After Two."

This novel by Carl Hiaasen, author of Tourist Season and Native Tongue, begins as most thrillers do, with a killing. But this is no everyday, hum-drum, garden variety killing. Our hero, Nick Stranahan, a 42-year-old private investigator who has killed five men and been married five times, skewers his attacker's aorta with the razor-sharp bill of a stuffed marlin.

The year is 1920: Flying in the face of convention, legendary American adventuress Beryl Helliwell never fails to surprise and shock. The last thing her adoring public would expect is that she craves some peace and quiet. The humdrum hamlet of Walmsley Parva in the English countryside seems just the ticket. And, honestly, until America comes to its senses and repeals Prohibition, Beryl has no intention of returning stateside and subjecting herself to bathtub gin.

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, creditors are calling, and after a breakup with his longtime girlfriend, he’s living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with a shocking story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry - known to her friends as the Cuckoo - famously fell to her death a few months earlier.

Childbirth can be dangerous even for the wealthy. So when opera singer Claire Buchanan shows Prudence and Geoffrey a postmortem cabinet photograph of her deceased twin sister and newborn niece, they express sadness but not surprise. The popular black-bordered portraits are the era's way of coping with the devastating losses that plague every family. What makes this death different is that Claire is convinced Catherine and her child were murdered.

Two years ago, Dr. Gina Brady broke Thomas Prescott’s heart, but now her panic-stricken satellite phone call starts it beating again with a fury. Thugs kidnapped the good doctor from the remote jungle village where she was working, and now the retired homicide detective’s expert skills are desperately needed to save her. Led by a colorful, but perhaps untrustworthy local guide, Prescott journeys deep into the Bolivian Amazon, plunging into a world where the only thing more dangerous than the gun-toting drug traffickers and the ruthless tribesmen, is the jungle itself.

Lew Archer knew he shouldn't have taken the case, but Alex Kincaid seemed so desperate. Kincaid's loving new bride, Dolly, had just inexplicably walked out on him, leaving Kincaid more than a little fearful for her sanity and her safety. So Archer reluctantly agreed to help Kincaid find his wife.

Sitting in cold cars for hours, serving lowlifes with summonses...being a PI means riding out a lot of slow patches. But sometimes the most familiar paths can lead straight to danger - like at Cass's go-to diner, where new delivery guy Jung Byson wants to enlist her expertise. Jung's friend, Tim Ayers, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, has been found dead, floating in Lake Michigan near his luxury boat. And Jung is convinced there's a murderer on the loose....

Annie McIntyre has a love/hate relationship with Garnett, Texas. Recently graduated from college and home waitressing, lacking not in ambition but certainly in direction, Annie is lured into the family business—a private investigation firm—by her supposed-to-be-retired grandfather, Leroy, despite the rest of the clan's misgivings.

Kendyl Jordan is a beautiful woman who drives an eye-catching classic car—until the car goes missing, possibly with something of great value hidden inside it. Can Roy Ballard help her find it? Despite Ballard’s budding reputation, Kendyl learns he’s not even a private investigator, he’s a legal videographer with very little experience. Still, he seems to have a knack for the job, and it doesn’t take him long to ID a couple of dangerous suspects. That’s when the case takes more twists and turns than a winding Texas Hill Country road.

Sarah Booth just wants the perfect Christmas holiday. Even with the dissolution of her engagement, she refuses to lose her Christmas spirit. But when Theodora Prince - an ex classmate and current Pastor's wife - comes calling with a year-old case and cash upfront, Sarah Booth must find the truth about the boys who ruined last year's Christmas pageant in time to stop them from doing it again.