Historical Private Investigators

In ancient Ireland, an island ruled by kings and druids, the nuns of Saint Brigid are fighting to keep their monastery alive. When the bones of Brigid go missing from their church, the theft threatens to destroy all they have worked for. No one knows the danger they face better than Sister Deirdre, a young nun torn between two worlds.

When Depression-era private eye Maggie Sullivan is invited to dine with a millionaire, she doesn't expect the first course to be a gun in her face. It draws her into a gold-plated web of theft, revenge, double crosses, and murder. A big-time swindle has made fools of some of the city's wealthiest businessmen. The man behind it has vanished. When Maggie begins asking questions, he reappears - dead in the river. But she's already learned too much. Someone's out to silence her too.

In response to a string of gold thefts in a Mother Lode mine, Quincannon goes undercover as a newly hired miner to identify and capture the men responsible. Meanwhile, Sabina finds herself not only making plans for her and Quincannon’s wedding, but also investigating both an audacious real estate scam and an abusive young man’s villainous secret.

Quincannon’s pursuit of two con men who have absconded to Hawaii with a considerable sum of his employer’s assets dovetails nicely with Sabina’s vision of a second honeymoon. But neither is wont to stay out of trouble, and Sabina inadvertently becomes involved in a locked room/dying message murder in Honolulu.

When an anonymous rival demands that master illusionist Harry Blackstone reveal his secrets on stage or die, the magician hires Toby Peters and his brother, ex-cop Phil Pevsner, to run security for his show at the famous Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Of course, Peters doesn't expect the job to include replacing a showgirl for Blackstone's show-stopping sawing-a-woman-in-half trick after the saboteur has stolen the blade.

Mildred Minck is an unremarkable woman - until one tragic night in June 1944 when she becomes the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The prime suspect is her husband, dentist Sheldon Minck, who's found standing over her body with the weapon in hand, raving that only Joan Crawford can identify the killer. It seems like a natural insanity defense, but Sheldon wants his neighbor, Private Investigator Toby Peters, to prove his innocence. The dentist is telling the truth about one thing: Joan Crawford was there.

In 1943, Charlie Chaplin is far from the most popular man in America. His communist sympathies and romantic indiscretions with young women have enraged everyone from right-wing radicals and the Ku Klux Klan to furious fathers. But when a knife-wielding intruder breaks into his house one night, the maniac isn't talking politics. He demands Chaplin stop making his latest black comedy about a man who murders wealthy women for their money - and specifically tells him to stay away from one Fiona Sullivan.

Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed "Fingers" (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer - and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna's throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can't refuse: Find the killer - or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave.

It's 1941, and the Marx Brothers' first movie for MGM, Go West, has the country in stitches. But now Chico Marx is worried he's going to need stitches when he receives a severed ear in the mail - a simple message from a Chicago bookie who wants $120,000, or else. Chico is baffled because, although he loves to gamble, he's never made a bet in Chicago. Desperate, he turns to the king of Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, who puts in a call to Toby Peters.

A year after The Wizard of Oz's smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets have been left standing on a soundstage in the depths of the MGM back lot in case the studio greenlights a sequel. But that doesn't explain what Judy Garland is doing there - or why she finds a Munchkin in full costume, lying facedown with a knife buried in his back.

Great War veteran and rising star Gene Hammons lost his job as a homicide detective when he tried to prove that a woman was wrongly convicted of murder to protect a well-connected man. Now a private investigator, Hammons makes his living looking for missing persons - a plentiful caseload during the Great Depression, when people seem to disappear all the time. But his routine is disrupted when his brother - another homicide detective, still on the force - enlists his help looking into the death of a young woman whose dismembered body is found beside the railroad tracks.

Although Bianca LaBelle, star of the wildly popular silent movie serial The Adventures of Bianca Dangereuse, and Rudolph Valentino, the greatest screen idol of all time, have been friends for years, in the summer of 1926, they are making their first picture together, a steamy romance called Grand Obsession. One evening after dinner at Bianca's fabulous Beverly Hills estate, a troubled Rudy confesses that he has received anonymous death threats. In a matter of days, filming comes to an abrupt halt when Rudy falls deathly ill. Could it be poison?

Jefferson Tayte is good at finding people who don't want to be found. For years he has followed faint genealogical trails to reunite families - and uncover long-hidden secrets. But Tayte is a loner, a man with no ties of his own; his true identity is the most elusive case of his career. But that could all be about to change. Now Tayte has in his possession the beginnings of a new trail - clues his late mentor had started to gather - that might at last lead to his own family.

Thirty-year-old society matron Lola Woodby has survived her loveless marriage with an unholy mixture of highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake until her husband dies suddenly, leaving her his fortune, or so Lola thinks. As it turns out, all she inherits from Alfie is a big pile of debt. Pretty soon Lola and her stalwart Swedish cook, Berta, are reduced to hiding out in the secret love nest Alfie kept in New York City.

Thirty-year-old society matron Lola Woodby has survived her loveless marriage with an unholy mixture of highballs, detective novels, and chocolate layer cake, until her husband dies suddenly, leaving her his fortune. Or so Lola thought. >As it turns out, all she inherits from Alfie is a big pile of debt. Pretty soon, Lola and her stalwart Swedish cook, Berta, are reduced to hiding out in the secret love nest Alfie kept in New York City.

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house. One of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde's star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she's having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and P.I. Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. He's there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood.

Washington, DC: Twin brothers are found drowned in a Perspex box, one gagged and strapped to a chair. It's the latest in a series of cruel and elaborate murders with two things in common: the killer has left a family history chart at each crime scene, and the victims all have a connection to genealogical sleuth Jefferson Tayte. Hoping his insight and expertise will help solve the case, the FBI summon Tayte back to the capital. But as he struggles to crack the clues, the killer strikes again - and again.

The sleek high-rises of Park Avenue make Frank Clemons uneasy. The former Atlanta homicide detective came to New York after a sickening murder case soured him on the South, but despite the glitz and excitement of his new surroundings and the beauty of the woman he shares them with, the city makes his skin crawl. Now a private eye, he is only at ease in the city's darker corners, among the whores, gamblers, and pimps who call Eighth Avenue home. That affinity for the socially isolated is what draws him to the case of Hannah Karlsberg, an elderly seamstress who deserved a better death than she got.

After four years of horror the Great War has ended, and president Woodrow Wilson's arrival in Paris in December 1918 unites the city in ecstatic celebration. Major Jamie Fraser, an army physician who has spent 10 months tending to American soldiers, is among the crowd that throngs the Place de la Concorde for Wilson's visit. As an expert on the Spanish influenza, Fraser is also called in to advise the president's own doctor on how best to avoid the deadly disease.

A deathbed confession and a long-hidden conspiracy are at the heart of a riveting historical mystery centered on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In March 1900, as former Congressman John Bingham of Ohio lies dying, he begins to tell a strange tale to his physician, Dr. Jamie Fraser. Bingham famously prosecuted eight members of John Wilkes Booth's plot to kill Lincoln. But during the 1865 trial, conspirator Mary Surratt divulged a secret so explosive it could shatter the republic.