Private Investigators Fiction

On my last stakeout for Quest Investigations, I nearly got clotheslined by a grove of angry dryads. I expected my bosses to reprimand me, but instead they handed me my first solo assignment. Me! Matt Steinitz, the only human on the Quest roster! Okay, so the mission isn’t exactly demanding. Obviously, the bosses wanted to give me something they think I can’t screw up. I’m determined to show them what I can do, however, so I dive right in with no complaints.

Winner of both the Harper Lee Award and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence, Carolyn Haines has thrilled countless readers with her Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries. Here, Sarah investigates when two wealthy heiresses claim a four-million-dollar family necklace was stolen. All the evidence points to insurance fraud, but when Sarah starts poking into the family’s dark secrets, one of the heiresses disappears.

British private investigator, Thomas Kincaid, thinks he's seen it all...until a gorgeous, soaking-wet American shows up and demands he help her find a stolen family heirloom. Having had his heart crushed once before by a beautiful woman, Kincaid has no intention of tempting fate a second time. But Joanna Thorncroft isn't about to take no for an answer. Joanna has to find her mother's ring and discover the secrets it contains. Secrets that have brought her all the way across the Atlantic and onto the doorstep of a sinfully handsome detective.

Archie Goodwin and detective Saul Panzer have ventured into the wilds of northern Manhattan to watch the Giants take on the Dodgers at the Polo Grounds. The national anthem is just winding down when Panzer spies a notable in the box seats: State Senator Orson Milbank, a silver-haired scoundrel with enemies in every corner of upstate New York. In the fourth inning, a monstrous line drive brings every fan in the grandstand to his feet - every fan save for one silver-haired senator, who has been shot dead by a sniper in the upper deck.

The ancient Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux has had a vision of his death. As he walks the Northwoods in solitude, he tries to prepare himself peacefully for the end of his long life. But peace is destined to elude him as hunters fill the woods seeking a woman named Dolores Morriseau, a stranger who had come to the healer for shelter and the gift of his wisdom. Meloux guides this stranger and his great niece, Cork O'Connor's wife, to safety deep into the Boundary Waters, his home for more than a century.

Spring, 1905: Free-spirited like the Thoroughbreds she rides across the Kentucky countryside, Stella takes adventure by the reins when she's asked to attend a mysterious wedding in rural England. But once she arrives at the lush Morrington Hall estate, her cold and ambitious father confesses that he won't only give away his best racehorses as gifts - he has also arranged to give away his daughter as bride to the Earl of Atherly's financially strapped son. Stella refuses to be sold off like a prized pony. Yet despite a rough start, there's something intriguing about her groom-to-be.

The husband of Monk's former assistant, Sharona, has been arrested for murder. Now back in San Francisco, she's ready to reclaim her place in Monk's life - much to the chagrin of his current assistant, Natalie. While Monk tries to maintain a delicate balance between the two women, he discovers a few unsettling snags in the case against Sharona's husband, and may be up against a killer who not only understands him, but is one step ahead.

Under the auspices of New York City's legendary mystery fiction specialty bookstore, The Mysterious Bookshop, and aided by Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler, international bestseller and MWA Grandmaster Sara Paretsky has selected the twenty most puzzling, most thrilling, and most mysterious short stories from the past year, collected now in one entertaining volume.

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.

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.

Pinion, Minnesota: a huge city of all of 700 folks who define the phrase ‘small town’. Nothing has ever happened in Pinion, and nothing ever will...until the mayor of sorts comes up with a scheme to put Pinion on the map. He’s heard of a place where a floating image of the Virgin Mary turned the whole town into a shrine, attracting thousands of curious people and making the townsfolk rich overnight. Why not stage a prank in Pinion and do the same? What could go wrong? And then a dead body shows up.

Birds of a Feather finds psychologist and private investigator Maisie Dobbs on another adventure in London. It is the spring of 1930, and Maisie has been hired to find a runaway heiress. But what seems a simple case at the outset soon becomes increasingly complicated when three of the heiress’s old friends are found dead. Is there a connection between the woman’s mysterious disappearance and the murders? Who would want to kill three seemingly respectable young women? As Maisie investigates, she discovers that the answers lie in the unforgettable agony of the Great War.

Vivian, a former reporter and a newlywed, doesn’t know what to do with herself after an incident with her husband forces her to question their partnership and her future. Yearning for the ocean air and a sense of home, she retreats to Tybee Island to clear her head and visit her Nana, a retired PI who now struggles with dementia. The phone rings: Catherine Grant, a housewife living in a private development nearby, woke up to find her husband and their baby girl missing, and she is desperate for help.

Egypt, 1926. Fiercely independent American Jane Wunderly has made up her mind: she won't be swept off her feet on a trip abroad. Despite her Aunt Millie's best efforts at meddling with her love life, the young widow would rather gaze at the Great Pyramids of Giza than into the eyes of a dashing stranger. Yet Jane's plans to remain cool and indifferent become ancient history in the company of Mr. Redvers, a roguish banker she can't quite figure out.

Some people think Hawaii is paradise, but Monk knows that danger, like dirt, lurks everywhere. Look at Helen Gruber, the rich tourist who took a fatal blow from a coconut. The police say it fell from a tree, but Monk suspects otherwise. His assistant Natalie isn't exactly thrilled about Monk's latest investigation. It was bad enough Monk followed her on vacation, and now it looks like the vacation is over.

Taylor is the name, John Taylor. My card says I'm a detective, but what I really am is an expert on finding lost things. It's part of the gift I was born with as a child of the Nightside. I left there a long time ago, with my skin and sanity barely intact. Now I make my living in the sunlit streets of London. But business has been slow lately, so when Joanna Barrett showed up at my door, reeking of wealth, asking me to find her runaway teenage daughter, I didn't say no.

The disappearance of a three-year-old girl from her isolated Highland home one summer shook the nation. A massive police search involving divers in the loch and dogs combing the moorland and mountains had failed to find Lily Masterton. Three years later, the world may have forgotten the blond-haired girl with the big blue eyes, but her grief-stricken parents hire Private Investigator Teàrlach Paterson—an expert in finding missing children—to bring their precious Lily home. But this is no ordinary family struck by tragedy.

Gabriel "Fox" Morrison is starting a brand new chapter in his life. He spent years drifting after his time in the military and finally felt ready to settle in one spot. This leads him to becoming the head detective of the recently opened Stonewall Investigations in Miami. His first case is one that not only hits close to home, but the result could have huge repercussions for more than just him and his client.

"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.

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.