Showing results by author "Al Lamanda" in All Categories

War has been declared…on comedy. After decades of being under federal surveillance, mob boss Victor Grant finally figured out a way to beat them at their own game and hold a mob meeting in private. He arranges a Caribbean cruise, where, in international waters he and his mob cohorts can meet in peace and quiet and plan and scheme. Back home all goes well until, under the watchful eye of Grant’s British housekeeper, his young son is kidnapped. Elizabeth, the housekeeper, in a panic calls Jack Pellegrino, Grant’s nephew for help with paying the one million dollar ransom. Thus sets in ...

Before he can retire to work his Montana ranch full-time, he has one more important task to perform. A junior marshal who Tillman appointed in Laramie, Wyoming, a few years earlier has taken a wrong path and Tillman must remove him from office. Tillman leaves his two grown sons and his sister, Alice, on the ranch and sets out for Wyoming by railroad. Along the way, Tillman makes a few detours and stops to visit old friends and colleagues. As he travels south to Laramie, Tillman relives his life in flashbacks. From the Big Woods of Wisconsin, where he was born and met his wife, Tillman's ...

It’s 1887 and The Illinois Detective Agency now has a new branch in San Francisco to support the existing office in Springfield, Illinois. A gruesome string of murders gives the Justice Department cause to contact The Illinois Detective Agency. Five men, seemingly unrelated have been found murdered with a Bowie Knife in their chest and the Justice Department doesn’t know what to make of it. Two additional men in Canada were found murdered in the same fashion. The entire agency, plus a disheveled, funny, little detective from Scotland Yard named Alfie Birdwhistle goes to work on the case...

On the night of the full moon in Wyoming Territory, somebody dies a horrible and ghastly death by being scalped. For months, the territory is held by the grip of fear and Governor Hale turns to Charles Porter, founder of the Illinois Detective Agency, for help. Porter's two top agents, James Duffy and Jack Cavill, are on holiday with their lady friends, so Porter assigns Joe Charles and Tom Adcock and scout/tracker Joseph Goodluck, a Mexican Comanche, to the assignment. Charles, Adcock, and Goodluck report to Governor Hale in Wyoming Territory. The most recent full-moon killing took place ...

After the murder of Illinois Detective Agency founder Charles Porter by a mysterious criminal named King Valdez, the team comes together with just one thought on its mind, find Valdez and bring him to justice. King Valdez is kidnapping children and selling them into slavery around the world. His operation is large and well organized and well financed. James Duffy assumes control of the agency and works closely with the Justice Department to find Valdez. Agents Jack Cavill, Joseph Goodluck, Quill, Harvey, Holt and newcomer Mr. Sato round out the team. A countrywide investigation uncovers ...

In 1885, Walter Burke and his two partners make their living as bounty hunters as a means to secure enough money to buy the cattle ranch they always dreamed of owning. When Walter's sister passes away, Walter takes a trip east to assume responsibility of her only son. As an heir, the boy stands to inherit his mother's estate, despite protests from the boy's stepfather. Walter takes the boy west on a journey into a world he has only read about in schoolbooks and dime store novels. Midway through their travels, the boy's stepfather kidnaps the boy for his inheritance. Walter and his partners ...

Two Hawks, a once proud Comanche warrior defeated in battle is now living a quiet life of desperation on the reservation at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Beneath his calm, collected demeanor beats the heart of a warrior and he dreams and longs for the days when he was young and free to roam and live in his native land. When his wife Yellow Sky becomes ill and dies of cancer, Two Hawks takes it upon himself to leave the reservation and go out on his own. Filled with hate and anger for the white man and especially the settles that pushed him off his land, he rides to the Llano in northern Texas, the ...

When counterfeit money is reported in large amounts from thirteen towns and cities across the country and the U.S. Secret Service is at a loss as to its origin, President Cleveland turns to The Illinois Detective Agency for help. Old friends with Charles Porter, founded of the Illinois Detective Agency, Cleveland brings James Duffy and Jack Cavill, principal owners of the agency to Washington DC, where they accept the assignment. Duffy, Cavill and the rest of the agency members, Miss Potts, Quill, Harvey, Joseph Goodluck and Lester Holt start the investigation by visiting the thirteen ...

Retired Naval officer Gus Sevens spent a decade researching the lost gold of Victorio Peak before setting out to find it, along with his much younger wife and newly acquired assistant. In the canyons of New Mexico, after weeks of searching, they find the ninety bars of gold that had been missing since 1937. Their cause for celebration quickly turns sour when, upon arriving home in Miami Beach, Gus’ wife is kidnapped and the ransom is the gold. In an attempt to save his wife, Gus is thrown into a plot of deception and betrayal that ultimately ends in murder.

A New Mexico County sheriff, John Beckett and his wife Shelly celebrate their wedding anniversary by taking a cruise aboard a luxury cruise liner and get far more than they bargained for when the ship is hijacked by international terrorists’ hell bent on nuking American cities. With the ship adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, the terrorists contact the President with their demands. All prisoners in GITMO are to be released or the passengers die. In true Die Hard, roller-coaster fashion, the sheriff sets out to stop the terrorists from launching nuclear weapons even if it means sinking the ...

Winner of the 2017 Nero Award for best mystery. Wally Sample is a degenerate gambler who owes money to every major casino and loan sharks everywhere. He is also the youngest heir to the Sample Iced Tea Corporation and upon his fortieth birthday, if he can prove to the courts that he is cured of his gambling addiction, will take his place as the sixth controlling member of the iced-tea giant. Problem is, a month short of turning forty, Wally’s gambling habit is worse than ever. In desperation, he turns to Frank Kagan, the family attorney who decades ago prepared the will for Wally’s ...

From Edgar and Nero Award Nominee Al Lamanda. John Bekker is called back to action when his close friend Sheriff Jane Morgan seeks his help with a perplexing mystery. Norman Felton, a resident of Midnight Island, drove his car to the mainland county high school and, in an out-of-control rage, beat an exchange student nearly to death with a baseball bat before being shot by sheriff's deputies. Felton's fourteen-year-old daughter Amanda is missing, and with each passing day the odds of finding her grow slimmer. Bekker works around the clock ferreting out details until slowly the puzzle comes ...

In Walking Homeless: The Final Chapter, amnesia victim John Tibbets is living in Canada, far and away from his past troubles. When he meets a woman and they decide to return to America, his past comes back to haunt him and once again, Tibbets finds himself being chased by a secret government organization that will stop at nothing to apprehend him.

Take one slightly insane and extremely violent mobster named Joey Grant. Joey’s goal in life is to one day command his own crime family and he will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Add Robert Grant, Joey’s older and more subdued brother. Also a member of the crime family, Robert is a dreamer and dreams about the one thing he doesn’t have, love. Stir in Gisela, a beautiful and seductive barmaid who works at the Grant’s nightclub who Robert falls in love with, but who Joey suspects is a gold-digger after Robert’s money. Toss in a Federal Task Force investigating the crime ...

Retired FBI Agent Duncan Wyatt and his exotic-dancer girlfriend Lo-Lo Del Ray, the heroes from Key West Takedown, return in an all new mystery/thriller Key West Winter Blues. Recruited out of retirement once again by his former boss Deputy Director Morgan, Wyatt agrees to casually keep an eye on the Hell’s Invader’s motorcycle club, a vicious band of drug dealers and murderers from California that apparently relocated to the Florida Keys. Led by club president Ben ‘Bunny’ Kendrick, the Hell's Invader’s seem benign enough, at first. Once Wyatt makes contact, the fun and the danger ...

Walking Homeless John Tibbets is not just another homeless man living in New York’s Bowery. He also suffers from advanced amnesia and has no idea how he arrived at the most famous mission in America. A recluse, he lives a quiet life of desperate isolation. While wandering the Bowery streets one summer night, Tibbets comes upon three men mugging a police officer. Acting on unknown instincts, Tibbets intervenes. Displaying the fighting skills of a Navy Seal, Tibbets saves the life of the police officer, suffering a bullet wound in the process. While recovering at the hospital, Tibbets ...

The zombie apocalypse comes to the old west when in 1879, a US Marshal travels from Wyoming to Montana to search for a missing federal agent. The Marshal and his posse get far more than they bargained for when instead of finding the missing agent they find they countryside filled with mysterious blood thirsty ghoul’s hell bent on feasting on live human flesh. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and it’s all out war between the living and the dead.

When the inner circle of President John F. Kennedy conspires to assassinate him, they turn to organized crime and the very powerful New York City based LaCasa crime family to get the job done. Irish/Italian mobster Jimmy Fallen came out of World War Two a disillusioned man and followed the career path of his father as a hit man for organized crime. Scarred by years of fighting in the war, Fallen’s existence is bleak and lonely. However, his professional services are highly sought after and he lands the prize of contracted hits when Tommy LaCasa hands him the assassination of President ...

A dying mob boss skips over his son and leaves his fortune to his daughter, a Catholic Nun assigned to Central Africa. After his death, the nun, Jenna Costello, flies to New York City to hear the terms of her father’s will. To her shock and the church’s dismay, Jenna’s father has cut his son Vincent out of the will and left his entire estate to Jenna, who plans to use the fortune to build a church and hospital in Africa. Outraged at being cutoff, Vincent has his mob lawyers hire a retired CIA mole to plan the accidental death of Jenna so he can claim his father’s fortune. The mole ...

Kellerman is back and that’s all you need to know. Bigger, bolder and more of a badass than ever, Kellerman is sucked into a complicated plot involving a kidnapped boy, a murdered woman and the boy’s ex-junkie mother when he does a favor for an old lawyer friend. The boy stands to inherit a great deal of money if and when he can be found, something the police and FBI couldn’t do. Cold As Ice is a twist and turn on every page whodunit that fans of Kellerman Mysteries will agree is his best. And as Kellerman is fond of saying, he plays by nobody’s rules but his own so don’t bet ...