Historical Private Investigators

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.

When Mrs. Lucille Hamilton walks through his door searching for her missing husband, Stone is skeptical, but willing to take her case. Some men don’t want to be found. But the husband’s body turns up, and his death is ruled a suicide. Stone is the only one who listens to her pleas and agrees to search for answers. Corporate espionage, deep betrayal - nobody can stand between Pete Stone and the truth.

December 1889. Fresh from debunking a 'ghostly' hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery.

Nathan Heller, star of MWA Grandmaster Max Allan Collins’ most acclaimed series of novels (more than 1 million copies sold to date!), comes to Hard Case Crime for the first time in an all-new thriller drawn from the pages of history. A millionaire’s son is kidnapped and private eye Heller is called in to help. But when half of the record $600,000 ransom goes missing, Heller must wade through a morass of deception and depravity to blow the lid off a notorious crime whose consequences reach into the corridors of power in Washington D.C.

A confessed murderer and a missing body lures Isobel Kingston into the night, but she finds far more than she bargains for on the foggy dunes. Ambushed and rendered unconscious, she wakes to find herself at the mercy of brutal men. Desperate, she plays her last card: she threatens her captors with the wrath of Atticus Riot. To her surprise, Riot's very name strikes terror into the men, and Isobel begins to wonder what she really knows about the enigmatic man.

Working in Hollywood, Private Eye Toby Peters has met a lot of phonies. But his newest case concerns a four-legged faker who threatens the fate of the free world. A few classy dames have crossed the detective's doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the first lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who's come to him on a matter of top-secret national security.

Easter, 1177. Canterbury Cathedral, home to the tomb of martyr Saint Thomas Becket, bears the wounds of a terrible fire. Benedict, prior of the great church, leads its rebuilding. But horror interrupts the work. One of the stonemasons is found viciously murdered, the dead man’s face disfigured by a shocking wound. When the king’s clerk Aelred Barling and his assistant Hugo Stanton arrive on pilgrimage to the tomb, the prior orders them to investigate the unholy crime.

It’s 1954, and Heller takes on the Sam Sheppard case - a young doctor is startled from sleep and discovers his wife brutally murdered. He claims that a mysterious intruder killed his wife. But all the evidence points to a disturbed husband who has grown tired of married life and yearned to be free at all costs. Sheppard is swiftly convicted and sent to rot in prison. Just how firm was the evidence...and was it tampered with to fit a convenient narrative to settle scores and push political agendas?

BERLIN 1934. DIE WELT IST BLIND. BERNIE GUNTHER NICHT. Gerade sind die Nazis an die Macht gekommen, und Bernie Gunther will als Privatdetektiv im Hotel Adlon so wenig Aufsehen wie möglich erregen. Doch dann stirbt ein Hotelgast. Als auch noch die Leiche eines jüdischen Boxers im Landwehrkanal auftaucht, gerät Gunther in den Strudel krimineller Machenschaften um den Bau des Olympiastadions. Gleichzeitig drohen die Amerikaner, die Spiele zu boykottieren. Entschiedene Befürworterin eines Boykotts ist die wunderschöne jüdisch-amerikanische Journalistin Noreen Charalambides.

1850: Charles Dickens is in Manchester, performing at the Queen's Theatre with his acting group. But his career on the stage is cut short when a man is shot dead - on set. With Dickens himself caught with the gun in his hands, he is immediately arrested. Along with the help of his good friend Superintendent Sam Jones, Dickens must do all he can to find the real killer, before he is locked up for a crime he didn't commit. Can Dickens convince the authorities of his innocence? Will he unmask the true assassin?

McHugh, the world's toughest spy, is on an assignment that spells triple trouble! Trouble #1 begins at the bar he owns to cover his espionage activities, called The Door. And it’s the door to death for the stranger he finds dying just outside with a shiv in his guts. McHugh doesn't like corpses on his doorstep, so he starts to back-track on the stranger, which leads him to a round, ripe, terrified girl, wearing narrow chino pants. There is puzzlement in her eyes, then recognition, then panic. Then the whole house falls in on McHugh!

Ein Brief von Ms Cäcilie Forrester erreicht Sherlock Holmes. Die ehemalige Vermieterin von Watsons verstorbener Frau Mary bittet den Detektiven erneut um Hilfe, nachdem er ihr schon einmal in der Vergangenheit behilflich war. Und genau wie damals, scheint die Ursache des Problems in einem kleinen Schmuckstück zu liegen, das Ms Forrester ihr Eigen nennt. Der oder die Täter schrecken weder vor Einbruch noch vor Morddrohungen zurück, um an das Geschmeide zu gelangen. Als Holmes und Watson mit dem Fall beginnen, ahnen sie noch nicht, welch eine gefährliche Reise vor ihnen liegt.

Es ist der Winter 1937, und der Ort Okamura befindet sich in heller Aufruhr: schon bald wird die renommierte Ichiyanagi-Famile ihren Sohn vermählen. Aber unter den Tratsch über das anstehende Fest mischt sich ein besorgniserregendes Gerücht: ein maskierter Mann streift durch das Städtchen und fragt die Leute zu den Ichiyanagis aus. In der Hochzeitsnacht dann erwacht die Familie durch einen furchtbaren Schrei, auf den eine unheimliche Melodie folgt.

When Cockney private detective George Harley saves a young girl's life on a dark London night in 1929, he doesn't realize it marks the beginning of an investigation which will change his life forever. The incendiary novel which inspired the girl's abduction also seems to be linked to a series of grisly murders that are taking place on Harley's patch, and though he's delighted to be asked by Scotland Yard to help find the killer before they strike again, he could do without the local razor- and cosh-wielding mobsters thinking he's a police informant.

Buenos Aires, 1985. Inspector Emiliano Vazquez knows the cost of silence. Haunted by the atrocities of Argentina’s Dirty War, he has buried his own complicity deep. But when a grotesque and inexplicable suicide uncovers a mass grave linked to the junta’s war crimes, Vazquez is drawn into a deadly web of secrets, ritual, and manipulation. The victim’s bizarre death appears tied to a missing page from the Devil’s Bible—a medieval text rumoured to hold the key to immortality through unholy devotion.

Im Berliner Hotel Adlon wird auf den russischen Zaren Nikolai II. ein Attentat verübt. Doch die Kriminalpolizei geht davon aus, dass der Anschlag dem deutschen Kaiser Wilhelm II. galt, der den russischen Gast empfangen hat. Als Nikolai II. Sherlock Holmes beauftragt, den Vorfall aufzuklären, geschieht ein zweites Attentat. Wenig später taucht der Wanderprediger und Geistheiler Rasputin auf. Holmes und Watson verstricken sich in die perfiden Machtspiele zweier Großmächte.

Solomon knew that he had one advantage. A pawn ticket belonging to a dead man tucked into his top pocket - the only clue to the truth.... An old soldier dies alone in his Edinburgh nursing home. No known relatives, and no will to enact. Just a pawn ticket found amongst his belongings, and 50,000 pounds in used notes sewn into the lining of his burial suit....

London, August 1881. The World's End Investigation Bureau is thriving, and Lily Raynor is delighted to have so much work—but she can't help wishing for a case that doesn't involve the overindulged upper classes. It's a wish she soon has cause to regret. The Reverend James Jellicote arrives seeking help on behalf of an elderly Jewish refugee. Yelisaveta and her young grandson arrived safely in London, only for the unspeakable to happen: eleven-year-old Yakov disappeared, without a trace. And soon, Lily and her assistant Felix have another impossible puzzle on their hands.

Forty modern masterpieces are found concealed on a neutral ship in international waters 16 months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Their provenance is sketchy and their final destination unknown. The Royal Navy suspects the works are “degenerate art” seized by the Nazis and shipped across the Atlantic to create cash for their covert operations. But how to prove it? There’s only one man for the job - Roy Hawkins. The British Secret Intelligence Service has put their half-American star agent in tough spots before, and he’s always come out on top.

Die Wahrheit in einem Wald voller Lügen. Lang und bitterkalt ist der russische Winter 1943. Doch im März wittern die ausgehungerten Wölfe von Katyn etwas im angetauten Boden: Knochen. Menschliche Gebeine. Gerüchten zufolge ein Massengrab für polnische Offiziere - ermordet von Russen. Goebbels will das Kriegsverbrechen für seine Propaganda nutzen. Um Beweise für die angebliche Tat zu sammeln, schickt er Privatdetektiv Bernie Gunther nach Katyn. Bernie steht unter dem unbarmherzigen Druck, Goebbels zu geben, was er fordert.