Private Investigators Fiction

An unsettling cold case investigation ensnares Cormoran Strike and his partner in a web of dangerous secrets in this #1 New York Times bestseller, the inspiration for HBO Max's acclaimed series C.B. Strike. When a troubled young man named Billy asks Cormoran Strike to help him investigate a...

RCMP detective Jack Taggart has avenged the murders of his niece and nephew, but the consequences linger. His deal with Damien, leader of the Satan's Wrath motorcycle gang, has put him in a bind and has jeopardized an informant in the gang. Meanwhile, other members of the gang, led by a mysterious figure known only as "The Boss", have been working to eliminate Taggart by destroying the lives of anyone with connections to him. And if the bad guys aren't enough of an obstacle, there are problems to be found on the force itself.

Vitus Adamson has a second chance at life now that he's no longer a zombie. But after killing his brother, Jamie, Vitus lands in prison on murder charges. Jamie's death exposes secret government projects so deep in the black they cannot be seen - without Vitus, that is. Sprung from jail, the government hires Vitus to clean up Jamie's messes, but tracking down his brother's homemade monsters gone rogue is easier said than done. The first of them is a convicted killer assumed to be safely behind bars.

Kendyl Jordan is a beautiful woman who drives an eye-catching classic car—until the car goes missing, possibly with something of great value hidden inside it. Can Roy Ballard help her find it? Despite Ballard’s budding reputation, Kendyl learns he’s not even a private investigator, he’s a legal videographer with very little experience. Still, he seems to have a knack for the job, and it doesn’t take him long to ID a couple of dangerous suspects. That’s when the case takes more twists and turns than a winding Texas Hill Country road.

Jeremy Sawyer was having a great time on a party barge on Lake Travis, and then he was suddenly nowhere to be found. Had he jumped? Fallen off? Been pushed? Roy Ballard - an expert in catching insurance cheats - intends to find out. After all, Jeremy Sawyer was the nephew of one of his biggest clients, and she can't shake the suspicion that it wasn't an accident. It isn't long before Roy and his partner Mia Madison begin to draw the same conclusion.

In this contemporary Romeo and Juliet story set within India's caste system, private investigator Vish Puri faces his most difficult challenge to date - a high-stakes mystery involving one of India's most controversial commodities: love. When Ram and Tulsi fall in love, the young woman's parents are dead set against the union. She's from a high-caste family, but her boyfriend is an untouchable from the lowest strata of Indian society. Young Tulsi's father locks her up and promises to hunt down and kill the "lover boydog."

In the last years of the Cold War, policy and trust for the Russians have led to disarmament treaties and hope for a new beginning. But peace is not yet within grasp. An entire American town has been wiped off the map: not by nuclear strike, but rather a space-borne particle cannon capable of reducing the entire nation to dust in hours. But who pulled the trigger? Was it the Russians, making a final bid for world domination? Or was it a third power - some aspiring conqueror hoping to pit the superpowers against each other? It’s up to Blaine McCracken to find out.

May, 1942 - Regan O'Reilly comes from a long line of police officers. She would have followed her father and brother into the force but women officers are rare and usually relegated to the status of social workers. Now she's a private investigator with her own agency and the freedom to live her life the way she wants. That is until she meets widower Mark Harris and his delightful son, Patrick, who have plans of their own for Regan.

Alex Dunn owned one of the most valuable collections of hobo nickels in the world, and it appears somebody killed him for it. Now Roy Ballard and Mia Madison are hired by the insurance company to track the collection down, which means they might reveal the identity of the killer in the course of their investigation. But the more they dig, the more suspects they uncover, including Dunn's children, his ex-wife, and a buxom masseuse who takes a hands-off approach to the services she offers.

Meet Roy Ballard, freelance videographer with a knack for catching insurance cheats. He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts - the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report - and with his history, who can blame them? - it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

Private investigator Cormoran Strike must track down a missing writer -- and a sinister killer bent on destruction -- in this "wonderfully entertaining" mystery (Harlan Coben, New York Times Book Review) that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike. When novelist Owen Quine goes...

Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family's estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors - and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered in his penthouse apartment, alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead - with the suitcase and painting both pointing them toward one man.

A young woman is dead, and another is missing. Two cases worlds apart. When an old friend throws Cutter a case involving the disappearance of a young woman from Detroit’s most prominent family, he sees an opportunity to make some quick cash to keep the bookies off his back. But he soon realizes his client’s problems are a lot more sinister than he thought and finds himself in too deep.

As Logan Martin begins his prison sentence for the brutal murder of his father, the eighteen-year-old’s aunt hires private investigator Teàrlach Paterson. She believes Logan is innocent and wants Teàrlach to uncover the truth. Teàrlach’s visit to the Martin family home yields two disturbing discoveries: a pentagram etched under the carpet in Logan's sister’s bedroom, and a link to the sinister deaths of their elderly neighbours—a journal with the same ominous symbol lies in the couple's home.

A disturbing package leads Detective Cormoran Strike and his assistant Robin Ellacott to investigate four dangerous murder suspects in this "magnetic" British mystery (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike. When Robin Ellacott opens an...

Snow dusts the cobbled streets of York as tourists flock to its famous Christmas markets. But for DCI Oldroyd, what starts as a peaceful evening on a ghost tour quickly turns deadly. The tour guide’s grim discovery is no theatrical performance—he finds the body of Henry Marlow, a notorious local landlord, in the doorway of a derelict building. Oldroyd soon has no shortage of suspects: a resentful ex-wife, angry tenants, and even the guide who knows every secret passage of the old city.

Rona Shively has been thinking a lot lately. Her mind is going in about a million different directions and for good reason. What starts out as a meeting with a potential client ends up being the title sequence for a whole series of messes that make absolutely no sense. She's trying to keep herself calm, but given the circumstances she'll be doing good just to keep herself out of jail and...out of the morgue.

The trouble at the Conlee’s lakeside estate begins when vandals topple and destroy an expensive Italian fountain. Then they slash the tires and damage the paint job on a Jaguar. That’s when Roy Ballard's client, the insurance company, asks him to catch the vandal in the act and prevent future claims. Surprisingly, the homeowner, Norman Conlee, opposes the idea. He intends to address the problem himself by fencing the property and keeping his revolver handy. Eventually, though, he gives in, and Roy goes to work.

Does Caleb Dimmick really work at his father’s motorcycle dealership, or does he simply ride the payroll, thereby giving his dad a nice tax break? Roy Ballard, a legal videographer specializing in insurance fraud, is hired to find out. After just a few days, Roy is convinced everything is legit - until a dealership employee is gunned down in his own backyard, possibly by an assassin on an orange sport bike.