Private Eye Thriller

Before he became a private investigator, before he served in the Detroit police, and long before he retreated to the wintry reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Alex McKnight played ball in the minor leagues. He doesn’t spend much time thinking about those days, at least not until a former teammate comes looking for him. The man is here to ask a favor. He wants Alex to help him find the woman with whom he had a brief, passionate affair three decades ago. But as the search deepens, McKnight begins to suspect that he hasn’t been told the full story.

The Block In the year 2050, the world has experienced a near total economic collapse, destroying the global monetary system. After years of struggle, a new form of exchange arose: cryptocurrencies called scripts, digital IOUs centrally managed through programs called blockchains. And the ambitious Proctors, who control the blocks, restlessly seek to expand their power. Milt Bruckner investigates blocks to counter fraud and is struggling to keep his script-chasing business afloat when a mysterious woman enters his establishment in need of his help.

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 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.

The US has abandoned its quest for the stars, and an old enemy has moved in to fill the void. The potential wealth of the universe is now in malevolent hands. Rebel billionaire Dan Randolph - possessor of the largest privately owned company in space - intends to weaken the stranglehold the new despotic masters of the solar system have on the lucrative ore industry. But when the mineral-rich asteroid he sets in orbit around the Earth is commandeered by the enemy, and his unarmed workers are slaughtered in cold blood, the course of Randolph’s life is changed forever.

Joe Copp is hired by old buddy, ex-cop Tom Chase, to protect him from the FBI. Chase is the security chief for a defense contractor, and Uncle Sam is following him and setting up his executives for a sting. Sure enough, two of them are stung...Permanently! Then, without warning, Chase is arrested as a spy. Now, he is not only running from the feds, but he is busting KGB skulls, and rubbing elbows with traitors while tripping over corpses. Somehow, Joe Copp has gotten himself in deep, and it is getting deeper by the minute.

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 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.

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.

Don Pendleton is the creator of the enormously popular The Executioner series, featuring Mack Bolan. Now he has created the Joe Copp series which develops against the backdrop of violence and corruption in Los Angeles. Joe Copp is an ex-cop, tough, smart, but caring and compassionate. In Copp for Hire, Joe is hired by a stripper to investigate a stalker, but before he can even begin the investigation, the woman is killed by a hit-and-run driver, who has now turned his sight on Joe.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Casey Derry has a gambling habit, and he knows he’ll get lucky one day if he just keeps trying. If only he can win big, he and his wife, Jen, can live happily ever after with no more worries, no more money problems, and no wondering whether they’re going to lose their house and live on the streets. With the last roll of the dice, he loses once again—his money and his dignity. It’s time to go home with his tail between his legs and endure Jen’s wrath and verbal abuse.

A publishing company wants to do a book the entire Cooper clan, starting with Matt. The publisher also has a movie deal lined up after the book is released. The Coopers' private lives will soon become public-very public. Things heat up during the interview process when Clay lets some family secrets slip out and they end up in the book. Meanwhile, Clay, Elliott and Gloria enlist retired police lieutenant Dean Hollister's help in tracking down the man who killed Gloria's father more than three years earlier.

The bodies are piling up around Los Angeles and Matt's on the case. The victims all seem to have one thing in common - Mother Goose. Each victim has a name similar to the name in the nursery rhymes and they are finding their demise much the same as the Mother Goose characters. Can Matt stay ahead of this killer and try to figure out who his next victim will be? He has to work fast.

Hollywood, 1940: It's been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy's arm. Since then he's scratched out a living as a private detective - but now his old friends, the Warners, have a job for him. Someone has mailed the studio a picture of Errol Flynn caught in a compromising position with an underage woman. Although Flynn insists it's a fake, the studio is taking no chances. Peters is to deliver the blackmailer 5,000 dollars and return with the photo negative.

Life has changed for Private Investigator Billie Carlson. After years of chasing down every lead possible, she's finally found her son, Lucas, and brought him safely home to Glasgow. One afternoon, Billie gets a call from an unknown number. The man on the end of the phone refuses to tell her his name, but he explains that his brother, Omar, is being held in prison after stabbing two men outside a block of flats. He wants Billie to investigate what happened that night and find out any information that might help Omar. Reluctantly, Billie takes on the case.

Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O'Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but a more pressing problem is whether to carry on the PI agency that her dead boss unexpectedly left to her. Easing into middle age, Siobhan would generally rather have a glazed donut than a romance, but when an old friend asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm, the rookie private detective's search begins at Llewellyn College.