С. Дж. Розан0.0 The death of a powerful Chinatown crime boss thrusts private eye Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith into a world of double-dealing, subterfuge, murder, and—because this is New York City—real estate in this new mystery by Edgar Award-winning novelist S. J. Rozan.
Choi has left the Tong headquarters building to his niece, who hires Lydia and her partner, Bill Smith, to accompany her to inspect it. The building is at the center of a tug-of-war between Chinatown preservation interests—including Lydia's brother Tim—and a real estate developer who's desperate to get his hands on it.
When Lydia, Bill, and Choi's niece go to the building, they discover the Tong members are equally divided on the question of whether the niece should hold onto the building or sell it—and make them rich. Entering Choi's private living quarters, they find the murdered body of Choi's chief lieutenant.
The battle for the building has begun. Can Lydia and Bill escape being caught in the crossfire?
Трэйси Кларк0.0 Former homicide cop turned uncompromising private investigator Cass Raines searches for a runaway teen--and unearths a twisted world of misdirection and lies -- in Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author Tracy Clark's fourth Chicago Mystery series installment.
Chicago in the dead of winter can be brutal, especially when you're scouring the frigid streets for a missing girl. Fifteen-year-old Ramona Titus has run away from her foster home. Her biological mother, Leesa Evans, is a recovering addict who admits she failed Ramona often in the past. But now she's clean. And she's determined to make up for her mistakes--if Cass can only help her find her daughter.
Cass visits Ramona's foster mother, Deloris Poole, who is also desperate to bring the girl home. Ramona came to Deloris six months ago, angry and distrustful, but was slowly opening up. The police are on the search, but Cass has sources closer to the streets, and a network of savvy allies. Yet it seems Ramona doesn't want to be found. And Cass soon begins to understand why.
Ramona is holding secrets dark enough to kill for, and anyone who helps her may be fair game. And if Ramona can't run fast enough and hide well enough to keep the truth safe, she and Cass may both be out of time.
Мэтт Койл0.0 San Diego Writer’s Festival Mystery Writer of the Year for 2021
Anthony, Shamus, and Lefty Award-winning Author
Will Rick Cahill survive an insidious disease long enough to see his first-born child—or will sadistic killers murder him first?
Rick Cahill is finally living a settled, happy life. His fiancée, Leah Landingham, is pregnant with their first child and he is doing PI work that pays well and keeps him out of danger. Then a doctor gives him the bad news about the headaches he’s been suffering—CTE, the pro football disease that leads to senility and early death—a secret he keeps from Leah and his best friend Moira MacFarlane.
When Moira asks him to monitor her son, Luke—who’s broken a restraining order to stay away from his girl-friend—a simple surveillance explodes into greed, deceit, and murder. Luke goes missing, and Rick’s dogged determination compels him to follow clues that lead to the exploration of high finance and DNA cancer research.
Ultimately, Rick is forced to battle sadistic killers as he tries to find Luke and stay alive long enough to see the birth of his child.
Perfect for fans of Michael Connelly and John Sandford
While all of the novels in the Rick Cahill PI Crime Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is:
Yesterday’s Echo
Night Tremors
Dark Fissures
Blood Truth
Wrong Light
Lost Tomorrows
Blind Vigil
Last Redemption
Doomed Legacy (coming November 2022)
Говард Майкл Гулд3.0 Blackmail, sexual harassment, murder . . . and a missing dog: eccentric, eco-obsessed LA private eye Charlie Waldo is on the case in this quirky, fast-paced mystery.
Paying a harsh self-imposed penance for a terrible misstep on a case, former LAPD superstar detective Charlie Waldo lives a life of punishing minimalism deep within the woods, making a near religion of his commitment to owning no more than One Hundred Things.
At least, he's trying to. His PI girlfriend Lorena keeps drawing him back to civilization - even though every time he compromises on his principles, something goes wrong.
And unfortunately for Waldo, all roads lead straight back to LA. When old adversary Don Q strongarms him into investigating the seemingly mundane death of a vagrant, Lorena agrees he can work under her PI license on one condition: he help with a high-maintenance celebrity client, wildly popular courtroom TV star Judge Ida Mudge, whose new mega-deal makes her a perfect target for blackmail.
Reopening the coldest of cases, a decades-old fraternity death, Waldo begins to wonder if the judge is, in fact, a murderer - and if he'll stay alive long enough to find out.
Pay or Play is the third in the Charlie Waldo series, following Last Looks and Below the Line. Last Looks was turned into a major motion picture, starring Charlie Hunnam as the offbeat private investigator.
Майкл Уайли0.0 Chicago private investigator Sam Kelson uncovers more than he bargained for when he investigates a series of suspicious deaths at the Clement Memorial Hospital.
My friend, this place is killing people.
While in the hospital recuperating from a gunshot wound, Chicago PI Sam Kelson is approached by a nurse who's troubled by three recent deaths. No pattern, no connection - except that three patients died when they shouldn't have.
Initially skeptical, Kelson starts asking questions - and the more he uncovers, the clearer it becomes that something isn't right. What exactly has been going on at Clement Memorial Hospital? Has someone been killing patients? If so, why? As Kelson digs deeper, he comes to realize that someone is determined to prevent him finding out the truth. Whatever it takes.
John McFetridge0.0 Behind the scenes, nothing is what it seems.
Gord Stewart, 40 years old, single, moved back into his sub-urban childhood home to care for his widowed father. But his father no longer needs care and Gord is stuck in limbo. He's been working in the movie business as a location scout for years, and when there isn't much filming, as a private eye for a security company run by ex-cops, OBC. When a fellow crew member asks him to find her missing uncle, Gord reluctantly takes the job. The police say the uncle walked into some dense woods in Northern Ontario and shot himself, but the man's wife thinks he's still alive.
With the help of his movie business and OBC connections, Gord finds a little evidence that the uncle may be alive. Now Gord has two problems: what to do when he finds a man who doesn't want to be found, and admitting that he's getting invested in this job. For the first time in his life, Gord Stewart is going to have to leave the sidelines and get into the game. Even if it might get him killed.
Andrew Welsh-Huggins0.0 Private investigator Andy Hayes takes the assignment against his better judgment.
In 1979, a high-profile burglar shot a cop, was apprehended, and then disappeared without ever being prosecuted. Forty years later, after the wounded cop’s suicide, his son, Preston Campbell, is convinced there’s been a cover-up that allowed his father’s attacker to go free. At first, Hayes dismisses Campbell’s outlandish conspiracy theories. But when a mysterious Cold War connection to the burglar emerges, the investigation heats up, and Hayes discovers a series of deaths that seem to be connected, one way or another, to the missing criminal. Nothing seems to add up, though, and Hayes finds himself hurtling headlong down a decades-old path of deadly secrets.
In the midst of cracking the cold case, Hayes has another mystery to solve closer to home: What’s been troubling his younger son, Joe, and why is his ex-wife so eager to have the boy out of her house? Further complicating matters, Hayes learns that another private eye, the captivating but inscrutable Hillary Quinne, is also on the trail of the vanished burglar and needs Hayes’s help. As their professional and personal lives blur, Hayes wonders what he’s gotten himself into, and whether he really wants out.
John Nardizzi0.0 Investigation is continuing with the return of PI Ray Infantino in a crime thriller written by "a bold new poet of American noir - This is the book Chandler would have written if he'd been a real-life private eye." - Ellen McGarrahan, Author of NYT Editor's Choice Two Truths and a Lie
Innocence is pain-when you're locked in a cage.
Private investigators Ray Infantino and Tania Kong take on the case of Sam Langford, framed for a murder committed by a crime boss at the height of his powers. But a decade later, Boston has changed. The old ethnic tribes have weakened.
As the PIs range across the city, witnesses remember the past in dangerous ways. The gangsters know that, in the new Boston, vulnerable witnesses they manipulated years ago are shaky. Old bones will not stay buried forever. When a vicious gangster and a corrupt cop team up to derail the investigation, the stakes are higher than ever.
Can Ray and Tania solve the case in time to free an innocent man?
Content Warning: Please note that this is a crime novel and contains content that may disturb some readers, including scenes of violence, sexual assault/rape, and emotional/physical abuse.
Мануэль Рамос0.0 Felon-turned-PI Gus Corral returns in another fast-paced mystery as he searches for a young runaway and finds more than he bargained for when human traffickers try to put an end to his case.
Philip Elliot0.0 FINALIST: Best First PI Novel, Shamus Awards
It’s the year 2000 and 78-year-old Mickey O’Rourke has been a Los Angeles PI for a very long time. He’d thought he’d seen it all until the disappearance of porn star Jeffrey Strokes sends him from the sex-filled studios of the San Fernando Valley to the desperate streets of Compton where Mickey’s final case becomes his biggest test.
Flash back to 1998 and struggling hair salon employee Jemeka Johnson, suspecting boyfriend Ray-Ray of infidelity, follows him one night from their East Compton home to what turns out to be a drug deal gone sour where a twist of fate finds Jemeka tossed onto a dark and dangerous path—one that offers huge reward for someone bold enough to seize it.
Meanwhile, in 1999, tired of robbing small-town diners and shooting bad dope in filthy motel rooms, newlyweds Richie and Alabama return to LA in search of the perfect score.
Paths cross and past meets present as bad decisions hurtle toward worse consequences—and no one will ever be the same.
Praise
“Elliott has a real feel for comedic noir in the Elmore Leonard vein.”
—Booklist
“A consistently gripping tale . . . suffused with meticulous details and characters at the mercy of the druggy Southern California underbelly. . . . An infectious sense of humor . . . enthusiastic plot and a swift pace combine with gritty characters in a satisfying thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A blisteringly brilliant ride in the best tradition of comedic-noir crime fiction straight into the sordid twisted underbelly of Los Angeles. . . . Absolutely nails the genre; sublimely descriptive, slightly stylized and . . . told with a veneer of brutal, black humor.”
—IndieReader (starred review)
“A crime fiction delight, with wonderful momentum, intriguing characters, and a satisfyingly solved whodunnit. . . . A complicated picture of desperation, greed, love, and the mistakes that even decent people can make.”
—US Review of Books (starred review)
“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. . . . Working toward a brutal, bloody denouement, this hard-boiled mystery hurtles from one violent episode to another [which] resolve into a single tale of betrayal, bad decisions, and greed as an aging detective cracks the last, most perplexing case of his career.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Elliott’s similes are beautiful, dialogue brisk and true, and exposition lightweight and similar to screenplay action. . . . If you’re looking for a fun and fast read with fully formed characters scheming in a heart-pounding plot, you can’t do any better than this marvel of a crime novel.”
—Scott Semegran, author of The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island
“Masterfully plotted, suspenseful, and populated with uniformly complex characters . . . with a strong sense of atmosphere and a healthy dose of social commentary. A must-read.”
—Mike Thorn, author of Shelter for the Damned
“A nonlinear mystery set in a Y2K LA so rich and character-driven that to call it noir betrays the literary aspects of the story. . . . Rather than a whodunnit, Porno Valley is a why- or howdunnit inside a slick page-turning noir where the sun’s always at high noon.”
—Tex Gresham, Humanitas Prize winner and author of Sunflower
“In this gripping, pulpy noir Elliott showcases his knack for crafting intricately layered stories with resonance. This hellish triptych takes us on a collision course with a cast of tragic characters who, even in their darkest moments, are relatable and sympathetic.”
—Niall Howell, author of Only Pretty Damned
“A fast-moving and ever-changing PI novel. . . . It recalls the best of Michael Connelly as the characters and their problems are spread out on the velvet background of Los Angeles 20 years ago.”
—Steve Aberle, Great Mysteries and Thrillers
Lori Duffy Foster0.0 Lisa Jamison has done well for a single mom who got pregnant at fifteen.
She’s a reporter at a well-respected newspaper and her teenage daughter is both an athlete and honors student. Though their relationship is rocky these days, Lisa has accomplished what she set out to do. She has given her daughter the kind of life she never had.
But all that changes when Lisa sees her daughter in the eyes of a dead man.
The cops call it a drug killing, but Lisa doesn’t believe it. She knows her ex-boyfriend was no drug dealer even though she hadn’t seen him in sixteen years. Lisa ignores warnings from her medical-examiner friend. She fails to heed barely veiled threats from the sheriff of a neighboring county. Instead, she risks her life and the lives of her daughter and their closest friend on a dangerous quest for answers.
The investigation leaves Lisa fighting for her family in a morbid, black market world she never knew existed. She learns that trust is complicated and that she, despite her cynical nature, has been blind. She trusted the wrong people and now she might have to pay with her life.
Фабиан Нициеза0.0 Andie Stern thought she’d solved her final homicide. Once a budding FBI profiler, she gave up her career to raise her four (soon to be five) children in West Windsor, New Jersey. But one day, between soccer games and trips to the local pool, Andie pulls into a gas station – and stumbles across a murder scene. An attendant has been killed, and the bumbling local cops are in way over their heads. Suddenly, Andie is obsessed with the case, and back on the trail of a killer, this time with kids in tow.
She soon crosses paths with disgraced local journalist Kenny Lee, who also has everything to prove in solving the case. A string of unusual occurrences – and, eventually, body parts – surfaces around town, and Andie and Kenny uncover simmering racial tensions and a decades-old conspiracy.
M. Ravenel0.0 Another case has fallen onto the desk of Tootsie Carter; a female detective armed with a snub-nosed Colt .38, unmatchable wit, and a pocketful of Tootsie Rolls.
New York City, 1975
A missing wife. The seedy underbelly of the boxing world. Lace your gloves and ring the bell, PI Tootsie Carter is on the case.
When a desperate man stumbles into her office, pleading for help locating his wife, Tootsie launches into the investigation.
Following the clues, she uncovers a boxing racketeer with a deadly agenda. Can Tootsie deliver the one-two punch that brings the woman home safe? Or will more bodies fall to the mats?
