Historical Private Investigators

The year is 1910, and in the small and seemingly sleepy English municipality of Haxford, there’s a new chief police inspector. At first, the dapper and unflappable Pignon Scorbion strikes something of an odd figure among the locals, who don’t see a need for such an exacting investigator. But it isn’t long before Haxford finds itself very much in need of a detective. Luckily, Scorbion and the local barber are old acquaintances, and the barbershop employs a cast of memorable characters who are nothing less than enthralled by the enigmatic new chief police inspector.

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.

Between ornate bridal gown fittings and meetings with Lyndy's distant relatives, Stella finally feels less like an out-of-place American and more like a respected aristocrat. Everything changes as the arrival of an anonymous gift and return of her overbearing father cast a dark shadow over the festivities, conjuring difficult memories and new fears....

Seth, the seven-year-old Earl of Woodridge, is spending Christmas at Halton House and he would like nothing better than to help trim the tree with the Christmas decorations his father had carved for him. But no one has any idea where these decorations are. Determined to make the young Earl's wish come true, Evie and her bodyguard, Tom Winchester, set out to a nearby village where the young Earl had lived in the hope that they might recover the lost decorations. They find themselves among a group of people who might all be suspects in the murder of a local villager.

Rosemary Simpson presents Book 8 in the Gilded Age Mystery series.

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.

Nora Kenny makes the occasional journey on the Staten Island ferry to work in Prudence's Fifth Avenue house, just as her mother once served Prudence's mother. As little girls, they played freely together, before retreating into their respective social classes. Still, they remain fond of each other. But when Nora slips away to Saint Anselm's one chilly Saturday to confess her sins and never returns, Prudence is alarmed. And when Nora's body is discovered in a local park, Prudence is devastated.

When genealogist Jefferson Tayte is hired to prove the identity of a black sheep in his client’s family tree, he unwillingly finds himself drawn into a murder investigation with nothing more to go on than a 150-year-old letter and a connection to a legendary ruby that has been missing for generations. As more letters are mysteriously left for him, Tayte becomes immersed in a centuries-old tale of greed, murder and forbidden love that takes his research from the wilds of the Scottish Highlands to the colour and heat of colonial India. A dark secret is buried in Jaipur. But why is it having such deadly repercussions in the present?

Staten Island would be forgettable were it not for the gleaming Tabernacle of the Silver Spire, where thousands of congregants come every Sunday to hear the sermons of Barnabas Bay. Millions more tune in on television, giving the good Reverend international fame, and a chance to spread the gospel from New York City’s harbor all the way to South Korea. But threatening notes have been appearing in the collection bag, suggesting that one of the faithful has decided it’s time this good shepherd get the hook.

Private investigator Charles Maddox is surprised when he is approached by Edward Tulkinghorn for help. The feared and shadowy attorney offers Charles a handsome price he can't refuse to do some sleuthing for a client. Charles learns that Sir Julius Cremorne has been receiving threatening letters, and now Tulkinghorn wants him to find and stop whoever is responsible. But what starts as a simple open-and-shut case swiftly escalates into something bigger and much darker. As he cascades toward a collision with powerful forces, Charles will need all the assistance he can get…

A dark and unsettling Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place delves into secrets buried beneath aristocratic respectability. When Dr. Watson notices strange changes in the behavior of Sir Robert Norberton and the eerie isolation of his ancestral estate, Holmes is drawn into a case steeped in deception, madness, and hidden crimes. Locked rooms, suppressed truths, and a sinister family secret transform a quiet English manor into a place of dread.

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.

Victor Silvius has spent nine years as an inmate at The Grange, a private sanatorium, for the crime of attacking judge Sir Giles Drury. Now, the judge's wife, Lady Elspeth Drury, believes that Silvius is the one responsible for a series of threatening letters her husband has recently received. Eager to avoid the scandal that involving the local police would entail, Lady Elspeth seeks out retired stage magician Joseph Spector, whose discreet involvement in a case Sir Giles recently presided over greatly impressed her.

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 modern woman in 1907, Lady Dunbridge is not about to let a little thing like the death of her husband ruin her social life. She's ready to take the dazzling world of Gilded Age Manhattan by storm. From the decadence of high society balls to the underbelly of Belmont horse racing, romance, murder, and scandals abound. Someone simply must do something. And Lady Dunbridge is happy to oblige.

1894. A well-respected academic is found dead in a gentlemen’s convenience cubicle at the British Museum, the stall locked from the inside. Professor Lance Pickering had been due to give a talk promoting the museum’s new 'Age of King Arthur' exhibition when he was stabbed repeatedly in the chest. Having forged a strong reputation working alongside the inimitable Inspector Abberline on the Jack the Ripper case, Daniel Wilson is called in to solve the mystery, and he brings his expertise and archaeologist Abigail Fenton with him.

In spring 1889, Prudence and Geoffrey set sail from New York Harbor on a private yacht bound for Bradford Island, where her friend Eleanor Dickson is to be wed. The Sea Islands along the Georgia coast serve as a winter playground for the likes of the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Dicksons. Despite her Yankee pedigree, Eleanor is marrying a Southern gentleman, Teddy Bennett, and Prudence is thrilled to be the maid of honor.

Spring, 1905: Free-spirited like the Thoroughbreds she rides across the Kentucky countryside, Stella takes adventure by the reins when she's asked to attend a mysterious wedding in rural England. But once she arrives at the lush Morrington Hall estate, her cold and ambitious father confesses that he won't only give away his best racehorses as gifts - he has also arranged to give away his daughter as bride to the Earl of Atherly's financially strapped son. Stella refuses to be sold off like a prized pony. Yet despite a rough start, there's something intriguing about her groom-to-be.

This fourth installment includes the biggest Drummond tale yet, a new love for our favorite detective, and plenty of new troubles. In here you’ll find stories tragic and comic, thrilling, frightening, action-packed, and even a little romantic. Basically, you’ll find all the reasons Marshall Drummond is one of the greatest detectives of the strange and bizarre, and one that you’ll keep coming back to again and again.

London, April 1882. When cool-headed Phyllida visits the World's End Investigation Bureau to offer a curious case concerning her fiancé, proprietor Lily Raynor is intrigued - and privately excited. Phyllida's fiancé, Wilberforce, is currently in an asylum in Brittany, after a tragic incident which resulted in the death of his father. Did he kill him on purpose - or was it an accident? Wilberforce's innocence looks increasingly in doubt when another murder happens at the asylum - and the evidence points to Wilberforce being the culprit.