Private Investigators Mysteries

Instant New York Times Bestseller! “Best-selling author James Patterson populates his murder-mystery novels with cold-blooded killers and smart detectives” (USA Today). In Holmes is Missing, PI Brendan Holmes has committed the perfect crime—he’s made himself disappear. Success...

The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Chief of Police Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his teammates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late-summer twilight. But then someone makes a horrifying discovery at a nearby lake: At the water's edge, facedown, is something that used to be a girl.

One small handwritten letter, sent from a dark, remote corner of the planet and lost in the system for 60 years, is about to change the entire human race. Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow. He's an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. But this time, he can't.

Jill Gardner, proprietor of Coffee, Books, and More, has discovered that the old stone wall on her property might be a centuries-old mission worthy of being declared a landmark. But Craig Morgan, the obnoxious owner of South Cove's most popular tourist spot, The Castle, makes it his business to contest her claim. When Morgan is found murdered at The Castle shortly after a heated argument with Jill, even her detective boyfriend has to ask her for an alibi. Jill decides that she must find the real murderer to clear her name.

In the dark, wintry highlands of Lochdubh, Scotland, where the local Calvinist element resists the secular trimmings of Christmas, the spirit of old Saint Nick is about as welcome as a flat tire on a deserted road. Nor is crime taking a holiday, as Constable Hamish Macbeth soon finds himself protecting an unhappy girl, unlocking the secrets of a frightened old woman, and retrieving some stolen holiday goods. Now the lanky lawman must use all his Highland charm and detective skills to make things right.

This intriguing, suspense-packed novel is the fourth Jack Taggart Mystery in the series commencing with Loose Ends, Above Ground, and Angel in the Full Moon. This time the implacable Mountie Jack Taggart goes undercover to follow the trail of a cheap Saturday-night special found at the scene of a murder. He traces the gun from the manufacturer to the person it was stolen from and through several criminals, until the trail leads him to a suspected heroin importer.

Jane Whitefield helps people disappear. Fearing for their lives, fleeing dangerous situations, her clients come to her when they need to vanish completely - to assume a new identity and establish a new life somewhere they won't be found. And when people are desperate enough to need her services, they come to the old house in western New York where Jane was raised to begin their escape.

Une série de meurtres macabres et terrifiants secoue Londres. Sur les lieux du crime, il ne reste rien d'autre qu'un tas d'ossements ainsi qu'une étrange sphère en os, sur laquelle des symboles arcaniques semblent avoir été gravés. Le fils de la dernière victime demande l'aide de Sherlock Holmes et du docteur John Watson. Tous deux tentent alors de découvrir le fil conducteur qui pourrait unir les assassinats et confondre leurs responsables.

New York Times bestselling author Ian Rankin returns to his legendary detective—it’s not the first time Rebus has taken the law into his own hands, though it may be the last. John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. But...

Nero Wolfe, lover of fine food and prize orchids, is a genius at daring detection. But he is always on guard when it comes to women. Now, murder at a fencing studio engages him and his confidential assistant, Archie Goodwin, in a dangerous duel with death. The prime suspect is a Balkan beauty who has a secret reason for wanting Wolfe to clear her - and a double identity that may be the perfect foil for covering up a killer.

Five years after the crashof TWA Flight 800, the government has declared it a result of mechanical failure. But John Corey, an ex-NYPD detective who is now a contract agent with the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is persuaded by Kate Mayfield, his wife and task force partner, that the case deserves a second look.

When the Department of Energy puts an underground iron mine on its short list of potential sites for storage of nuclear waste, a barrage of protest erupts in Tamarack County, Minnesota, and Cork is hired as a security consultant. Deep in the mine during his first day on the job, Cork stumbles across a secret room that contains the remains of six murder victims. Five appear to be nearly half a century old - connected to what the media once dubbed "The Vanishings", a series of unsolved disappearances in the summer of 1964, when Cork's father was sheriff in Tamarack County.

January 1910. A journalist has been killed in a suspicious blaze. Everything points to a group of suffragettes, but the apparent culprit insists she is innocent. When Lady Hardcastle receives a letter from a suffragette requesting her urgent help, the retired spy turned sleuth knows only she stands between an accused young woman and the gallows. Evidence at the scene makes Lizzie Worrel’s innocence difficult to believe, and with the police treating it as an open-and-shut case of arson, Lady Hardcastle faces a barrage of resistance as she tries to dig out the truth.

The aging millionairess has a problem: where is her young playboy husband getting all his money? To help find the answer, Archie infiltrates a party at her palatial estate. But her late-night murder ruins the festive mood...and a letter bomb from a powerful crime boss makes Nero Wolfe do the unthinkable - run for his life. Suddenly Archie finds himself on his own, trying to find a killer without the help of his old mentor. For to all appearances, Wolfe has vanished. The career of the world’s most famous detective has ended in cowardice and disgrace...or has it?

Elvis Cole is hired to find a woman who’s disappeared, a seemingly ordinary case, until he learns the missing woman is an explosives expert and worked for a Defense Department contractor. Meanwhile, LAPD K-9 Officer Scott James and his patrol dog, Maggie, track a fugitive to a house filled with explosives - and a dead body. As the two cases intertwine, they all find themselves up against shadowy arms dealers and corrupt officials, and the very woman they promised to save may be the cause of their own deaths.

A bomb explodes in the desk drawer of a top TV executive. Was it intended for him or the man who opened the drawer? They each had enemies enough to die a dozen times over. Was it the jealous wife or the ambitious partner? The secretary who got passed around like an inter-office memo? Or the man who couldn’t wash the blood off his hands? Nero Wolfe didn’t want any part of it - but he was up to his neck in the toughest case of his career!

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

An ax murder leaves Franki less than jazzed.... Jazz Fest is in full swing in The Big Easy, but PI Franki Amato is singing the blues. The owner of an historic Italian grocery and deli is murdered in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Axeman of New Orleans, a notorious serial killer who hasn’t struck in over a century, and someone Franki knows has been arrested for the crime. Adding to her distress, Franki, her mom, and her meddling Sicilian nonna finally meet her fiancé’s family, but the tone of their encounter is decidedly downbeat.

When an elderly, world-famous magician is found dead in his Cherringham mansion, there is nothing suspicious about the passing. According to the doctor, it was a heart attack - plain and simple. But the performer's long-time assistant suspects something sinister and she asks Jack and Sarah to investigate. And like the great magician's amazing tricks, it soon becomes clear that his death is anything but simple: in the world of magic, nothing is ever what it seems, and sometimes even illusions can turn deadly.

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.