Historical Private Investigators

1899: A dinner party hosted by Ella King at her magnificent Gothic-inspired cottage, Kingscote. Ella's son staggers in, obviously inebriated, and the family's butler is found pinned against a tree beneath the front wheels of Philip's motorcar, close to death. At first, the tragic tableau appears to be a reckless accident - one which could ruin Philip's reputation. But when Emma later receives a message informing her that the butler bullied his staff and took advantage of young maids, she begins to suspect the scene may have been staged.

St Pauls, Bristol, 1980. Joseph Tremaine Ellington, now 57 years old, has long abandoned his former career as an enquiry agent for the safety of teaching. But his old life draws him back. One of the very few lights from Ellington’s dark and violent past has flickered out. His fiancée, Ruth Castle, is dead - leaving him again heartbroken and alone to bring up his 15-year-old niece, Chloe. Ellington’s days are long and lonely, his nights tormented by old ghosts.

Despite being the granddaughter of an earl, Julia Renshaw is under pressure to marry for money - and has settled for Gilbert Townsend, a viscount and a wealthy industrialist. At the reception aboard the groom's yacht, there appears to be tension between Gil and several guests. The bride is also less than pleased when she discovers that her honeymoon will be more crowded than expected - with Gil's pretty secretary, among others, coming along. The morning after the wedding, before the yacht can depart the harbor, Gil's body is found in the water below.

New York City, 1945. The war in Europe is in its final days, and life in the Big Apple may soon be back to normal. Harlem private detective Walter Morris is hired by the reclusive tycoon, Cuthbert Hayden, to find his maid's missing daughter. Walter begins a journey into the dark and seedy underworld of the city - through a world of back-alley nightclubs, gangsters, double agents, serial killers, black market surgeons, and scientifically engineered monsters...and that doesn't even scratch the surface.

1898. When Juan's father is killed while working as a photographer in Cuba, the young man is left with nothing but his last photos amid the chaos as the war between Spain and America escalates. But the images reveal a sinister truth to his father's last moments, and Juan soon realises his death was no accident. The young man travels to Scotland to grieve with his surviving family and soon immerses himself in the study of photography and pioneers a self-timer. When this technology inadvertently solves a crime, it is not long before the device draws the attention of law enforcement.

A body plunging off a cliff, a new craze for pedestrianism or race-walking with gambling, a constable willing to make a gruelling 90 miles through the tree-covered ranges without a break, and a testing undercover assignment for Mr. Hardy.

As October of 1900 draws to a close, London’s foggy, lamplit streets are hit by a string of burglaries which puzzle Scotland Yard. When they culminate in a gruesome murder, Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate. But has he put the wrong man behind bars?

The first three mysteries in the acclaimed Dewey Webb series: Web of Deceit, Murder in Fashion, and Secrets and Lies. It's 1949. World War II is over, but it has a way of haunting people for years to come. Meet Dewey Webb, a hard-boiled 1940s detective, a man of contradictions who gets down and dirty to get the job done.

Hollywood, 1947. Jack Shannon, a former actor whose promising career was interrupted by the war and ended by a facial scar sustained in combat, is now a studio publicist. He jokes that the only thing he knows about publicity is how to suppress it, but that, in fact, is his real job. He’s a fixer who babysits the studio’s stars and covers up their bad behavior. Everything changes for Jack when Savannah Stevens enters his life.

He can out shoot, out think, out fight, and out love any other secret agent on the planet - get out of the way James Bond before your tux gets rumpled! McHugh lands a Caribbean island assignment: Stir up a revolution, topple the world's most brutal dictator, smash the secret police whose methods start with torture and get a lot worse from there, help the revolutionaries, and stop the revolution before it goes too far in the other direction. It's just another days' work for McHugh.

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!

The 1960s' toughest, brainiest, sexiest, and most compassionate spy, is back in print! Meet McHugh America's#1 Secret Agent a combination of Mickey Spillaine's Mike Hammer and Ian Flemming's James Bond. In this first book in the series, McHugh takes a leave of absence from his spy work to help out his lover's sister who has found a dead Mafioso in her apartment, her boyfriend missing, and half San Francisco's mobsters after her.

Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliff-hanger....

Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them - and he definitely doesn't like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby Peters has a rep for being discreet. So when the film tycoon and aviation magnate needs a detective to very privately investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints taken from his home during one of his fabulous parties, he summons Peters. But what starts as counter-espionage intrigue turns into a triple murder, and Peters soon finds himself bait for a killer.

Following a prolonged cocaine binge, Sherlock Holmes is closer to death than Dr. Watson has ever seen him before. Fearing for his friend's well-being, the pair repair to France, there to enjoy a leisurely convalescence at the home of Holmes' old friend, Henri Gillet. But even before they reach Paris, they become embroiled in a perilous mystery of the like even they have never encountered before.

Thursday, July 16, 1953. It's just another Thursday morning in July of 1953 when the doorbell rings at 137, Hartford Street, and it's bad news. Carter's father has been murdered in Georgia, and the local sheriff has no intention of finding out who really did it. So, Nick and Carter borrow the first plane that Marnie, Nick's amazing secretary, can find for them, and they zoom off back into the past to see if they can uncover the truth of what really happened before the wrong man is convicted.

Eddy Hart finds himself investigating a murder that gives him an unwanted glimpse into the not-so-glamorous side of the movie industry in 1940s Hollywood.

Days before the Pearl Harbor attack plunges the US into World War II, private eye Maggie Sullivan is hired to find a missing engineer in Dayton, Ohio. Has Gil Tremain been kidnapped, or has he turned traitor to his employer and, maybe, his country? As Maggie pieces together his last movements, she finds there are secrets the man’s ex-wife and his employers don’t want uncovered.

The gifting of Faberge eggs to wives and mothers began when the emperor of Russia gave gold Faberge eggs, crusted with jewels, to his empress and mother each year on Easter. Many were lost or destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution, but others survived into modern-day and are valued in the tens of millions. One of the Faberges believed to be lost to history is recovered. Matt Kile finds himself surrounded by devious international criminals while trying to protect the safety of both the fabulous Faberge and its (apparent) rightful owner.

When a man offers 1940s private investigator Maggie Sullivan twice her usual fee to look into a "possible" jewelry theft from his hotel safe, she’s skeptical - until a maid’s body tumbles out of a trash can and a jeweler known for high quality fakes is murdered. Does a hotel guest who vanished without a trace hold a piece of the puzzle? Or, does it have to do with the Polish count and his family fleeing the start of WW2 in Europe?