489 results for "Detective"

The Long Night of White Chickens

Francisco Goldman
Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, The Long Night of White Chickens marked the brilliant debut of Francisco Goldman's internationally acclaimed writing career. The Long Night of White Chickens is a novel born of two worlds: It is the story of Roger Graetz, raised in a Boston suburb by a patrician Guatemalan mother, and his relationship with Flor de Mayo, the beautiful young Guatemalan orphan sent by his grandmother to live with his family as a maid. When, years later in the 1980s, Flor is murdered in Guatemala, Roger returns to uncover the truth of her death. There he is reunited with Luis Moya, a childhood friend, and together they venture on a quest into Flor's life that will have unexpected, and unforgettable, repercussions.
Grove Press 2013 570 pages

The Roman Hat Mystery

Ellery Queen
A murder in a crowded Broadway theater presents a full house of suspects--the first in this classic mystery series starring Ellery Queen Despite the dismal Broadway season, Gunplay continues to draw crowds. A gangland spectacle, it's packed to the gills with action, explosions, and gunfire. In fact, Gunplay is so loud that no one notices the killing of Monte Field. In a sold-out theater, Field is found dead partway through the second act, surrounded by empty seats. The police hold the crowd and call for the one man who can untangle this daring murder: Inspector Richard Queen. With the help of his son Ellery, a bibliophile and novelist whose imagination can solve any crime, the Inspector attacks this seemingly impenetrable mystery. Anyone in the theater could have killed the unscrupulous lawyer, and several had the motive. Only Ellery Queen, in his debut novel, can decipher the clue of the dead man's missing top hat.
MysteriousPress.com 2015-01-20 397 pages

The Devil's Company

David Liss
From the acclaimed author of The Whiskey Rebels and A Conspiracy of Paper comes a superb new historical thriller set in the splendor and squalor of eighteenth-century London. In Benjamin Weaver, David Liss has created one of fiction's most enthralling characters. The year is 1722. Ruffian for hire, ex-boxer, and master of disguise, Weaver finds himself caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse, pitted against Jerome Cobb, a wealthy and mysterious schemer who needs Weaver's strength and guile for his own treacherous plans. Weaver is blackmailed into stealing documents from England's most heavily guarded estate, the headquarters of the ruthless British East India Company, but the theft of corporate secrets is only the first move in a daring conspiracy within the eighteenth century's most powerful corporation. To save his friends and family from Cobb's reach, Weaver must infiltrate the Company, navigate its warring factions, and uncover a secret plot of corporate rivals, foreign spies, and government operatives. With millions of pounds and the security of the nation at stake, Weaver will find himself in a labyrinth of hidden agendas, daring enemies, and unexpected allies. With the explosive action and scrupulous period research that are David Liss's trademarks, The Devil's Company, depicting the birth of the modern corporation, is the most impressive achievement yet from an author who continues to set ever higher standards for historical suspense.
Thorndike Press 2009 703 pages

Street of No Return

David Goodis
"David Goodis is the mystery man of hardboiled fiction."--Geoffrey O'Brien In Street of No Return, we meet the pathetic figure of Whitey. Once upon a time Whitey was a crooner with a million-dollar voice and a standing invitation from any woman who heard him use it. Until he had the bad luck to fall for Celia. And then nothing would ever be the same. In Street of No Return, David Goodis works the magic that made him one of the most distinctive voices in hard-boiled fiction, creating a claustrophobic universe in which wounded men and women collide with cataclysmic force.
Millipede Press 2007 252 pages

The Case of the Midwife Toad

Arthur Koestler
On September 23, 1926, and Austrian experimental biologist named Dr. Paul Kammerer blew his brains out on a footpath in the Austrian mountains. His suicide was the climax of a great evolutionary controversy which his experiments had aroused. The battle was between the followers of Lamarck, who maintained that acquired characteristics could be inherited, and the neo-Darwinists, who upheld the theory of chance mutations preserved by natural selection. Dr. Kammerer's experiments with various amphibians, including salamanders and the midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans), lent much weight to the Lamarckian argument and drew upon him the full fury of the orthodox neo-Darwinists. Arthur Koestler had known about Dr. Kammerer's work when he himself was a student in Vienna, and he has always been interested in this tragic story. He gives a fascinating description of the venomous atmosphere in which the battle was fought and of the lengths to which apparently respectable scholars would go to discredit their opponents. Heading the attack on Kammerer was a British scientist, William Bateson, who hinted that the Viennese's experiments were fakes, but who failed to examine the evidence, including the so-called nuptial pads of Kammerer's last remaining specimen of the midwife toad. It was a young American scientist who delivered the coup de grace; on a visit to Vienna, he discovered that the discoloration of the nuptial pads was due not to natural causes but to the injection Indian ink. When his findings were published, Kammerer shot himself. Mr. Koestler, whose recent writings, in books such as The Act of Creation and The Ghost in the Machine, have been in part concerned with evolutionary theory, decided to investigate this old mystery. When he started on his researches, he expected to relate the tragedy of a man who had betrayed his calling, for Kammerer's suicide was accepted as a confession of guilt and his work was discredited from that day to this. Instead, as Mr. Koestler read the contemporary papers, corresponded with Kammerer's daughter, Bateson's son, and the surviving scientists who attended Kammerer's lecture in Cambridge, he found himself writing a vindication of a man who in all probability was himself betrayed. The story that emerges is, on one level, fascinating piece of scientific detection; on another, it is a moving and human narrative about a much abused, brilliant and lovable figure. Though no Lamarckian himself, Mr. Koestler ends the book with an appeal to biologists to repeat Kammerer's experiments with an open mind in order to verify or refute them. If Kammerer's claims were posthumously confirmed our outlook on evolution would be significantly changed. A superb intellectual thriller whose implications still reverberate today, The Case of the Midwife Toad is an entirely new kind of book for Mr. Koestler, and perhaps only he could have written it, for it required expert knowledge and familiarity with the academic world of science, combined with the creativity and imaginative insight of an outstanding novelist.
One 70 Press 2016-01-08 188 pages

The River King

Alice Hoffman
A story about a small town's surface appearance and the truths submerged below from the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic . People tend to stay in their place in the town of Haddan. The students at the prestigious prep school don't mix with locals; even within the school, hierarchy rules as freshman and faculty members find out where they fit in and what is expected from them. But there are minor collisions happening everywhere: An awkward boy, the son of a teacher, is flirting with a pretty classmate, the daughter of a convenience-store cashier. A photographer in plastic flip-flops and an overflowing backpack is about to marry a staid, ambitious historian. And when a body is found in the river behind the school, a local policeman named Abey Grey will walk into this enclosed world and upset it entirely...
Penguin Group 2001-07-01 352 pages

The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs

E. V. Cunningham,Howard Fast
A dog's murder leads detective Masuto to a most unusual poisoning case In Beverly Hills, murder has suddenly gone out of style. For five weeks, the head of the city's tiny homicide squad, Zen detective Masao Masuto, has worked only robbery investigations. But after more than a month without a corpse, this dry spell is about to end. The dead woman is Ana Fortez, a Chicana whose death was originally classified as terminal food poisoning brought on by a feast of botulism-infested clairs. But because botulism can only grow in an airtight space, the medical examiner warns Masuto that the fatal bacteria must have been purposefully injected into the pastry. When a wealthy housewife's dog drops dead after munching on premium chocolates, Masuto finds that her bonbons have been laced with the same toxin. He begins a search for a killer targeting the sweet tooth of Beverly Hills - proof that crime in Southern California never stays boring for long.
Random House Publishing Group 1980-10 191 pages

The Case of the Kidnapped Angel A Masao Masuto Mystery

E. V. Cunningham,Howard Fast
Hollywood star Mike Burton and his blond sex goddess have a rocky marriage, but when she's kidnapped and held for ransom he's quick tp pay the million dollar ransom without police interference. Detective Masao Masuto suspects her disappearance is a hoax, but the real puzzle is who set it up and who got the money since her husband was found dead.
Delacorte Press 1982 149 pages

Werewolf Cop

Andrew Klavan
Zach Adams is one of the best detectives in the country. Nicknamed Cowboy, he’s a soft-spoken homicide detective known for his integrity and courage under fire. He serves on a federal task force that has a single mission: to hunt down Dominic Abend, a European gangster who has taken over the American underworld.After a brutal murder gives them a lead, Zach and his tough guy NYPD partner Martin Goulart are finally on Abend’s trail. But things get complicated — and very, very weird. Goulart’s on-the-job enemies are accusing him of corruption. And Zach is beginning to suspect that Abend’s evil goes beyond crime—perhaps to the edge of the supernatural. As his investigation continues in Germany, Zach finds himself lured into the impossible. In a centuries-old forest under a full moon, a beast assaults him, cursing him forever. In the aftermath, Zach is transformed into something horrible —something deadly.Now, the good cop has innocent blood on his hands. He has killed—and will kill again—in the form of a beast who can’t be controlled or stopped. Before he can free himself, he’s going to have to solve the greatest mystery of all: How can you defeat evil when the evil is inside you?
Pegasus Books 2016-04-04 336 pages

Sex, Murder and a Double Latte

Kyra Davis
When a mystery writer cries bloody murder, everyone blames her overactive imagination ... Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccinos can be. So Sophie knows it's not paranoia or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave. When a filmmaker friend is brutally murdered in the manner of a death scene in one of his movies, Sophie becomes convinced that a copyca.
Red Dress Ink 2006-03-28 336 pages

City of the Sun

David Levien
Private detective Frank Behr has been perfectly content living a solitary life, working on a few simple cases, and attempting to move on from his painful past. But when Paul and Carol Gabriel ask him to help them find their missing son, he can hardly refuse. Going against everything he fears—Behr's been around too long to hope for a happy ending—he enters into an uneasy partnership with Paul on a quest for the truth that will become both dangerous and haunting. Richly textured and crackling with suspense on every page, City of the Sun masterfully takes readers on an investigation like no other.www.davidlevien.com
National Geographic Books 2009-02-24 448 pages

The Werewolf of Paris

Guy Endore
Endore's classic werewolf novel--now back in print for the first time in over forty years--helped define a genre and set a new standard in horror fiction. The werewolf is one of the great iconic figures of horror in folklore, legend, film, and literature. And connoisseurs of horror fiction know that The Werewolf of Paris is a cornerstone work, a masterpiece of the genre that deservedly ranks with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Endore's classic novel has not only withstood the test of time since it was first published in 1933, but it boldly used and portrayed elements of sexual compulsion in ways that had never been seen before, at least not in horror literature. In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across revolutionary Paris in the 1870s seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.
Pocket Books 1976-07-02 277 pages

A Nasty Piece of Work

Robert Littell
A New York Times Bestselling Author Former CIA agent Lemuel Gunn left the battlefield of Afghanistan for early retirement in the desert of New Mexico, where he works as a private investigator from the comfort of a mobile home. Into his life comes thirty-something Ornella Neppi, who's making a hash out of her uncle's bail bonds business. Ornella has reason to believe cocaine dealer Emilio Gava is planning to jump bail, leaving her uncle $125,000 out of pocket. Gunn agrees to help.
Thorndike Press 2014 311 pages

Hunting Midnight

Richard Zimler
From the internationally bestselling author of The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon comes a novel of incomparable scope and beauty that takes the reader on an epic journey from war-ravaged nineteenth-century Europe to antebellum America. A bereft child, a freed African slave, and the rich history of Portugal's secret Jews collide memorably in Richard Zimler's mesmerizing novel--a dazzling work of historical fiction played out against a backdrop of war and chaos that unforgettably mines the mysteries of devotion, betrayal, guilt, and forgiveness. Hunting Midnight At the dawn of the nineteenth century in Portugal, John Zarco Stewart is an impish child of hotheaded emotions and playful inquisitiveness, the unwitting inheritor of a faith shrouded in three hundred years of secrecy--for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula have been in hiding since the Inquisition. But a season of loss and bitter discovery brings his innocence to an abrupt end. It is only the ministrations of a magical stranger, brought to Porto by his seafaring father, that restore his safety: Midnight, an African healer and freed slave, the man who will become John's greatest friend and determine the course of his destiny. When Napoleon's armies invade Portugal, violence again intrudes on John's fragile peace, and seals his passage into adulthood with another devastating loss. But from the wreckage comes revelation as he uncovers truths and lies hidden by the people he loved and trusted most, and discovers the act of unspeakable betrayal that destroyed his family--and his faith. And so his shattering quest begins as he travels to America, to hunt for hope in a land shackled by unforgivable sin. With stunning insight and an eye for rich historical detail--from the colorful marketplaces of Porto to the drowsy plantations of the American South, from the Judaism John discovers as a young man to the mystical Africa that Midnight conjures from his memories--in Hunting Midnight Richard Zimler has crafted a masterpiece. "From the Hardcover edition."
Migdal Press 2004 534 pages

The abbess of Crewe

Spark, Muriel
It is time to elect a new abbess at the Convent of Crewe. There are two contenders: nuns Alexandra and Felicity. Alexandra is busy bugging the convent while Felicity calls the police when her love letters (to a young Jesuit priest) are stolen. A brilliant laugh-out-loud satire on the Watergate scandal.This is one of the 22 novels written by Muriel Spark in her lifetime. All are being published by Polygon in hardback Centenary Editions between November 2017 and September 2018.
Polygon 2018 88 pages

A Cast of Vultures A Mystery

Judith Flanders
“Whip-smart” (Louise Penny) amateur sleuth Samantha Clair returns in the newest novel from Judith Flanders, the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of A Murder of Magpies. There was every possibility that I was dead, and my brain hadn’t got the memo. Or maybe it was that I wished I were dead. On reflection, that was more likely. Usually clear-headed editor Samantha Clair stumbles through her post-book-party morning with the hangover to end all hangovers. But before the ibuprofen has even kicked in, she finds herself entangled in an elaborate saga of missing neighbors, suspected arson, and strange men offering free tattoos. By the time the grisly news breaks that the fire has claimed a victim, Sam is already in pursuit. Never has comedy been so deadly as she faces down a pair from Thugs ’R’ Us, aided by nothing more than a Scotland Yard boyfriend, a stalwart Goth assistant, and an unnerving knowledge of London’s best farmer’s markets. From the acclaimed bestselling author Judith Flanders, A Cast of Vultures continues the sharp-witted series starring book editor and amateur sleuth Samantha Clair.
St. Martin's Publishing Group 2018-06-19 320 pages

Somebody's Done For

David Goodis
SOMEBODY'S DONE FOR Calvin Jander is just about done for when his boat capsizes and he's forced to tread water, hoping for a sight of land. When he does find the shore, he's just barely alive. And that's when Vera finds him. She takes him to her shack, gets him some clothes and food. Then Jander's real trouble starts, because Vera is Hebden's daughter. Hebden and his two partners are holed up in a deserted house on a lonely stretch of New Jersey coastline, and they aren't welcoming visitors. When they discover Jander, it's all he can do to keep them from killing him. But as Vera gradually begins to get under his skin, death by shotgun begins to look like the easy way out.
Stark House Press 2023-08-18 182 pages