Historical Private Investigators

Forensic genealogist Morton Farrier agrees to take on a case to identify the biological mother of three foundlings, abandoned in shop doorways as newborn babies in the 1970s. He has just one thing with which to begin his investigation: the three women’s DNA, one of whom is his half-aunt. With just six days of research time available to him, his investigation uncovers some shocking revelations and troubling links to his own grandfather, and Morton finds that for the first time in his career, he is advising his clients not to read his concluding report.

May 1890: As NYU Law School finally agrees to admit female law students, Judge MacKenzie's daughter, Prudence, weighs her choices carefully. Chief among her concerns is how her decision would affect the Hunter and MacKenzie Investigative Law agency and her professional and personal relationship with the partner who is currently recuperating from a near fatal shooting.

In the spring of 1853, Private Detective Laetitia Rodd receives a delicate request from a retired actor, whose days on the stage were ended by a theatre fire 10 years before. His great friend, and the man he rescued from the fire, Thomas Transome, has decided to leave his wife, who now needs assistance in securing a worthy settlement. Though Mrs. Rodd is reluctant to get involved with the scandalous world of the theatre, she cannot turn away the woman in need. She agrees to take the case.

Captain Gabriel Lacey accompanies famous dandy Lucius Grenville to Egypt, tasked with finding an "object" in Alexandria and procuring it, whatever the cost. The task does not turn out to be so simple. Locating what Denis wants in the teeming city proves difficult, sending Lacey and Grenville exploring tombs and temples down the Nile. Lacey must deal with treasure hunters, a shadow following him and his friends, murder, and missing his new family as he explores the exotic country he has so longed to see....

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.

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…

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.

The Korean War rages on in this thrilling alternate history sequel to Beat the Devils: Morris Baker, now a private investigator, must solve a missing persons case in the midst of an endless battle. December, 1959: The Korean War rages on. Protesting the bloody conflict, a Korean-American man by...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some days are quiet and peaceful. Or so Drummond has been told. His days, even ones that start of pleasant, tend to become nightmares. Especially when ghosts invade his dreams to lure him into fighting a psychopath. Or perhaps something worse than ghosts are behind this.

When retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise. However, they soon discover they’ve been lured to the island in part to tout its attributes as a burgeoning vacation retreat to wealthy investors back home. Instead of finding tranquility among the tropical isle’s quaint villages and sandy beaches, they encounter a land teeming with racial, social, and economic tension.

A few days before Christmas Inspector Lestrade is asking Holmes for assistance in a strange murder case. The extremely challenging and downright dangerous investigation leads them to a catholic abbey in Middlesex, where evil strikes terror into people's hearts.

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?

British private investigator, Thomas Kincaid, thinks he's seen it all...until a gorgeous, soaking-wet American shows up and demands he help her find a stolen family heirloom. Having had his heart crushed once before by a beautiful woman, Kincaid has no intention of tempting fate a second time. But Joanna Thorncroft isn't about to take no for an answer. Joanna has to find her mother's ring and discover the secrets it contains. Secrets that have brought her all the way across the Atlantic and onto the doorstep of a sinfully handsome detective.

As revenge for marrying a man he didn't approve of, Véronique d'Hergemont's father, Professor Antoine d'Hergemont, kidnapped her baby and, while escaping, drowned with the baby at sea. Fourteen years later, in 1917, Véronique is watching a film and spots her quite unique signature written on the side of a hut in the background of a scene. The signature, V d'H, prompts her to visit the location where the movie was shot and launches her into a deep and ancient mystery that only one man can solve.