Private Eye Mysteries

Is there such a thing as a good sociopath? Newly minted private investigator Annalisa Vega is skeptical, but her first client, Mara Delaney, insists that some sociopaths are beneficial to society. Mara has even written a book titled The Good Sociopath that is centered around Chicago neurosurgeon Craig Canning. Dr. Canning has saved hundreds of lives so it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t actually care about his patients, should it? But Mara has a more urgent problem, which is that she is now concerned that Canning might not be such a good sociopath after all.

Former pro wrestler "Hammerhead" Jed Ounstead, now a fully fledged private investigator, is riding high after his first successful case. In this second episode, Jed leaves the wrestling realm to enter a new arena: women's flat-track roller derby. When old acquaintance Stormy Daze seeks his help finding her team's missing coach, Jed discovers that the turnbuckle-and-metal-chair mayhem of the wrestling ring pales in comparison to roller derby's four-wheeled ferocity.

Grammar school—it's all about eating and sleeping. Well, for Chet Gecko, anyway. To Chet, nothing is more divine than a plate of Mrs. Bagoong's Mothloaf Surprise followed by a sweet bit of shut-eye on the playground. (Besides a few Pillbug Crunch bars and a monthlong holiday, that is.) In this...

Danger may be Chet Gecko's business, but dessert is his delight. . . . Chet Gecko's hunger for mystery is matched only by his appetite for cockroach casserole, mosquito marshmallow surprise, and stinkbug pie. So when the cafeteria needs help nabbing a food thief, Chet digs into the case with a...

Santa Fe lawyer Ed Eagle fell in love with the seductive Barbara Kennerly, and married her, against his better judgment. He should have listened to his intuition. Ed awakens on the morning after his 40th birthday to find that Barbara has vanished, and Ed's money from his business, his bank, and his brokerage accounts has been wired to the Cayman Islands.

This is New Orleans - 1950. She crossed Canal Street from the neutral ground, walked right past Private Eye Lucien Caye, and he watched her come and go, both views unforgettable. A woman can do that on occasion, sear an indelible image in a man's mind. She remained a snapshot until a week later when she stepped from the darkness beneath the balcony of Lucien's building shortly after midnight, on a sultry Thursday night.

This is New Orleans - 1947. It starts as a wandering daughter case when a pretty widow hires New Orleans private eye Lucien Caye to find her 22-year-old daughter. Helen Croix walks into Caye's office with a picture of her missing daughter, Madelyn. She warns Lucien he'll be tempted when he finds the alluring strawberry-blond temptress. Madelyn Croix will most likely seduce him. Helen describes her daughter as rapacious. Lucien has to look up the word to discover it means avaricious, greedy, ravenous - subsisting on live prey.

Come prowl the lonely, sometimes violent streets of American's most exotic city, the city that care forgot, New Orleans, with a lone-wolf private-eye named Lucien Caye. Unlike most 40s PIs, Caye rarely drinks, doesn't smoke or wear a hat (it messes up his hair). He's six feet tall with wavy, dark brown hair and standard-issue Mediterranean-brown eyes, a sly smile and a clever mind that often gets him into trouble. Caye lives and works in the run-down New Orleans French Quarter of the late 1940s.

Don't toss out the cake and candles just yet. Philip Roth, who, among other notable achievements, changed the way Americans laugh about masturbation, celebrates his birthday on March 19th. Check out: I Married a Communist and Operation Shylock.

Books 3 and 4 in the award-winning Chet Gecko series! Farewell, My Lunchbag: Danger may be Chet Gecko's business, but dessert is his delight. . . . Chet Gecko's hunger for mystery is matched only by his appetite for cockroach casserole, mosquito marshmallow surprise, and stinkbug pie. So when...

Ex-police officer Joe Copp takes a case, and he's not even sure who he's working for. Surrounded by a cast of frightened actors, and the theater's gorgeous director, he's been assigned the role of bodyguard for the leading man.

This exciting collaborative by the Private Eye Writers of America and Sisters in Crime contains short stories by well-known mystery writers including Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton. The stories are presented in pairs, each linked to the other by a common theme or topic.

Chet Gecko loves a good mystery. Almost more than he loves his fee: stinkbug pie. So when fellow fourth grader Shirley Chameleon asks him to find her missing brother, Billy, Chet expects the case to be as easy as pie. But Billy's disappearance is part of a larger plot, one that involves the Rat...

It has been one hell of a fall from grace for former Homicide Detective Maxwell Floyd. He’s hit rock bottom. Broken, bleeding. It took only a New York minute to change his life forever — his marriage, career, and sobriety left to die in the aftermath. He thought he could still make a difference as a private eye, but all the alcohol in the world can’t keep the ghosts of his past from haunting him.

Joe Copp, ex-cop, finds himself once again pulled into the down-and-dirty back streets of Los Angeles. His new case sends him into the back lots of Hollywood, behind the glamorous facade of the movie industry, where the subjects of a stakeout begin dying, one by one.

Serious trouble is brewing in Brighton, California, a sprawling coastal community on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Basin: Its Mayor has just been murdered, and the chief of police has resigned amid rumors of corruption in his department. Now, ex-police officer Joe Copp has been hired by an old friend, the current Brighton City administrator, to get to the bottom of the municipal mess.

Michael Shayne, "the reckless, redheaded Irishman", was a popular hard-boiled detective created by crime novelist Brett Halliday. In the novels, Michael Shayne settled in Miami just after WWII, making crime pay by fighting it with a license and an attitude. Like Mike Hammer and Philip Marlowe, Shayne was a loner. The backstory on Mike is that he was happily married, but it hit him hard when his wife was tragically murdered. Grief stricken, Shayne loses himself in his work as a private eye, prowling the dark streets of the city.

Fresh off solving the biggest case of his career, Private Eye Maxwell Floyd’s life has completely changed. Old habits have died hard. Late one night, the beautiful Helena Krivka shows up at Max’s office, distraught over the disappearance of her husband. Lukas Krivka is a senior developer for a multitrillion-dollar software company, and it seems he’s gotten involved with the wrong people. Worried the man’s wife is in danger as a result, Max takes the case. Clues to Lukas’ fate lead Max into a dangerous game of intrigue with the Lithuanian mob and a deadly Russian assassin.

Joe Copp is recovering from a three week bout of partial amnesia after a perp almost blew him away with his own gun. His doctors have assured him his memory will eventually return, but that isn't soon enough. It seems that during the last three weeks he married a lady who is now a corpse in the Los Angeles morgue.

PI Truman Smith has become a loner after failing to find his sister Jan during a recent search of Galveston Island. He jogs on the Seawall, plays with his cat, and reads lots of Faulkner books. He is pulled from his self-imposed retirement when his old high school football buddy Dino asks him to find a young girl named Sharon. As Tru begins his investigation, dead bodies begin to appear and Tru himself is attacked.