Private Detective

Even though Agatha Raisin loathes amateur dramatics, her friend Mrs. Bloxby, the vicar's wife, has persuaded her to support the local pantomime. Stifling a yawn at the production of Babes in the Woods, Agatha watches as the baker, playing an ogre, struts and threatens on the stage. Then a trapdoor opens… followed by a scream and then silence. Surely, this isn't the way the scene was rehearsed?

It’s a wily killer who dares to strike on Nero Wolfe’s hallowed turf - and leave a corpse strangled with Wolfe’s own soup-stained tie. But no sooner does the gourmandizing sleuth clean up this first course of murder than he faces a gun-toting wife who serves up a confession of homicidal intent - only to become the sole suspect when the corpus delicti is found.

With a rich man footing the bills and a handsome lover on the side, Isabel Kerr seemed to have the perfect setup. Now the well-kept lady is stone-cold dead, and the cops have nabbed a Manhattan private eye who just happens to be an acquaintance of Nero Wolfe.

Jack Sommers was just an ordinary accountant from Chicago - that is until his wife passed away, his young daughter was kidnapped, and he became the main suspect in an $88 million embezzlement case. Now Jack is on the run, hoping to avoid the feds long enough to rescue his daughter, Sophie, from her maternal grandfather, a suspected terrorist in Palestine.

Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin star in these four gems. In "The Christmas Party", Wolfe condescends to uncharacteristic theatrics, which aren't enough to clear him from suspicion of murder. The "Easter Parade" tempts Wolfe to commit larceny for an orchid. "A Fourth of July Picnic" has Wolfe scheduled for to appear as an orator. But his day in the sun is rained out by murder. The last selection, "Murder Is No Joke", is a whodunit in a couturier's salon, where a murderer is dressed to kill and kill again.

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars and The Painter, a luminous, masterful novel of suspense - the story of Celine, an elegant, aristocratic private eye who specializes in reuniting families, trying to make amends for a loss in her own past.

A fatal accident at Bruncliffe’s livestock auction mart leads to a call for detectives Samson O’Brien and Delilah Metcalfe. What starts as a simple health-and-safety investigation soon takes a sinister turn when they discover evidence that suggests murder. Clive Knowles approaches them for help – his sheep are being threatened by the gang of rustlers that is plaguing the Dales. Meanwhile, poacher Pete Ferris has also decided to play his hand, setting in motion a blackmail plot which will ensure Samson is pulled back into trouble with his nemesis Rick Procter.

In Liverpool, a woman inexplicably leaps to her death. The following morning, two bodies are found on nearby Crosby Beach: a woman tied to a statue, and a man buried up to his neck and left to drown. When a nine-month-old murder case is reopened, DI Sheridan Holler is shocked to uncover family connections between the victim, Daniel Parks, and the three unexplained deaths. With Daniel’s body still missing and the number-one suspect cleared of the crime, Holler’s cold case suddenly becomes a major murder investigation.

The streets of Bay City, California, in the early 1950s are as mean as they get. Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and the private eye business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest and most ruthless families—and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.

When London’s finest jazz musicians, the Dizzy Heights, are booked to play the glitzy Midsummer Ball at a country house in Oxfordshire, they expect a weekend filled with flappers and toffs having a roaring good time. But the festivities at Bilverton House take a turn for the worse when the group are stranded by a summer storm. And when a member of the Bilverton family turns up dead in a locked room in an apparent suicide, Skins, Dunn and Ellie realize this is going to be a much tougher gig than they thought.

When a renowned theater director senses something amiss during his latest production, he calls Nero Wolfe. Though the corpulent genius wouldn’t normally accept a job this vague, a mutual friend dangles the prospect of a very rare orchid in exchange for his services, and Wolfe can’t resist. With a mind to suss out useful backstage gossip, Wolfe turns to his faithful assistant, Archie Goodwin, to impersonate a journalist in order to speak to the cast. Though Goodwin’s conversations prove unfruitful, on his last day at the theater, the director is murdered in his sound-proof booth.

Nineteen-year-old college student Eliza Hennessey is trans—and she has a rocky relationship with her father, their new client. Brian's convinced his daughter's vanished, rather than run away, but Fran and Ken aren't so sure she wants to be found. The PI duo investigate, and soon Fran is butting heads with her irritating sort-of-ex-boyfriend Mank at the NYPD, who has what seems to be a similar case on his desk. But not even Fran could guess how tangled their investigations are going to get—or how deep they'll need to dive into murder and mayhem to solve the case!

The Dales Detective Agency is on the brink of closure. Samson O’Brien has returned to his position as an undercover operative for the Met in London, and his relationship with Delilah is under pressure. Their troubles are only multiplied when an ecologist is found dead and the finger of blame is pointed firmly at Delilah’s older brother, Will Metcalfe. It seems an open and shut case. An argument over an ecology report for planning permission which got out of hand, with Will known to have a hot temper. But Delilah won’t accept he’s guilty and neither will Samson.

World War II has arrived, and U.S. Army intelligence wants Nero Wolfe urgently. But the arrogant, gourmandizing, sedentary sleuth refuses the call to duty. It takes his perambulatory, confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, to titillate Wolfe's taste for crime with two malevolent morsels: a corpse that won't rest in peace and a sinister "accident" involving national security. So as Goodwin lays the bait on the wrong side of the law, Wolfe sets the traps to catch a pair of wily killers.

When Priscilla Eads, heiress to the fortune of a cotton towel company, implores Nero Wolfe to sort through a case buried in dirty laundry, Wolfe says no. But hours later, Mrs. Eads and her maid get strangled, and the stories of the suspects don't quite wash. To the dismay of a greedy board of directors and Mrs. Eads' gold-digging ex-husband, the astute Wolfe decides to scrub away the stain of murder.

London. A snowy December, 1888. Sherlock Holmes, 34, is languishing and back on cocaine after a disastrous Ripper investigation. Watson can neither comfort nor rouse his friend - until a strangely encoded letter arrives from Paris. Mlle La Victoire, a beautiful French cabaret star, writes that her illegitimate son by an English lord has disappeared, and she has been attacked in the streets of Montmartre.

Pretty Amy Denovo wants to find the father she has never seen, but she can't afford Nero Wolfe's outlandish fees...or can she? Suddenly, she's knocking on the detective's door with a parcel full of bills in hand - and a quarter of a million hidden in her closet. It's all part of a nest egg left by her unknown father. But when Wolfe and his able assistant, Archie Goodwin, begin to trace the money to the man, they make a startling discovery: Amy's father murdered her mother, and now he may be after her.

The mountain couldn't come to Wolfe, so the great detective came to the mountain - to Lame Horse, Montana, to be exact. Here a city slicker got a country girl pregnant and then took a bullet in the back. Wolfe's job was to get an innocent man exonerated of the crime and catch a killer in the process. But when he packed his silk pajamas and headed west, he found himself embroiled in a case rife with local cynicism, slipshod police work, and unpleasant political ramifications.

Marcus Didius Falco discovers that rank brings problems, the most gruesome of which is a corpse buried under the tiles of his new bath house. The contractors have fled to Britain where, as the Fates have it, Falco is ordered. A local chief and ally of the Romans is having a Palace built by the Emperor Vespasian. However, the project is running late, and fatal accidents keep happening. Falco, troubleshooting for the Emperor, is without an ally and now next on the list for assassination.

If there’s one thing detective Bath Peter Diamond has no patience for, it’s a dumb git trying to get involved in one of his investigations - for example, a Philip Marlowe-wannabe private investigator like the self-styled Johnny Getz. But fate has saddled Diamond with this trial. A Bath antiques dealer, “Seppy” Hubbard, has disappeared without a trace, and his daughter has hired Getz to find him. When a body is discovered in Seppy’s locked-up store, the missing persons case becomes a murder investigation, and now Diamond has to collaborate with the insufferable private eye.