60 results for "Detective"

The clarity: a novel

Thomas, Keith
"For fans of Black Mirror and True Detective, a visceral high-concept thriller about a psychologist who must protect the life of an eleven-year-old girl whose ability to remember past lives makes them both targets of a merciless killer. Dr. Matilda Deacon is a psychologist researching how memories are made and stored when she meets a strange eleven-year-old girl named Ashanique. Ashanique claims to harbor the memories of the last soldier killed in World War I and Matilda is at first very interested but skeptical. However, when Ashanique starts talking about being chased by the Night Doctors--a term also used by an unstable patient who was later found dead--Matilda can't deny that the girl might be telling the truth. Matilda learns that Ashanique and her mother have been on the run their whole lives from a monstrous assassin named Rade. Rade is after a secret contained solely in memories and has left a bloody trail throughout the world in search of it. Matilda soon realizes Ashanique is in unimaginable danger and that her unique ability comes with a deadly price. Fast-paced, suspenseful, and a chilling blend of science and danger, The Clarity is a compelling take on the possibilities of reincarnation and life after death"--
Atria/Leopoldo & Co 2018-02-20 295 pages

Innocence: or, murder on Steep Street

Kovály, Heda
"This rediscovered gem of Czech literature, a crime novel by renowned Holocaust memoirist Heda Margolius Kovaly, depicts a chilling moment in history, redolent with the stifling atmosphere of political and personal oppression of the early days of Socialist Czechoslovakia. In 1985, Czech Holocaust memoirist, literary translator, and political exile Heda Margolius Kovaly turned her pen to fiction. Inspired by the stories of Raymond Chandler, Kovaly knit her own terrifying experiences in early 1950s Socialist Prague -- her husband's imprisonment and wrongful execution, her own persecution at his disgrace -- into a gorgeous psychological thriller-cum-detective novel. Set in and around a cinema where a murder was recently committed, Innocence follows the unfolding of the investigation while telling the stories of the women who work there as ushers, each of whom is forced to support herself in difficult circumstances. As the novel brings this group alive, it tells their various life stories that have brought them to this job, the secrets they share with one another, and the secrets they keep. When the detective trying to solve the first murder is found slain by the cinema, all of their secrets come into the light. A smart, evocative, and deeply stirring literary crime novel with international appeal"--
Soho Crime 2015 234 pages

Matasha

Erens, Pamela
"It's 1970's Chicago. Eleven-year-old Matasha Wax is in the sixth grade and just starting to feel the pressures of growing up. Her best friend Jean has been blowing her off, while her parents are in a standoff over her mother's desire to adopt a refugee from Vietnam. And while the bullies in school have started to grow breasts and inches, Matasha remains a puny four-foot-four--which means she will need growth hormone shots, and she is terrified of needles. Apart from her daily reading of the advice columns in the newspaper, keeping up with the Patty Hearst and Watergate scandals, and tracking her parents' deteriorating marriage, Matasha is fixated by the story of Martin Kimmel, a nine-year-old boy who disappeared a few months ago, and whose body has yet to be found. But none of these ongoing problems could have prepared Matasha for her mother's sudden disappearance. When the letters start coming from Switzerland, she knows something is very, very wrong--but no one will tell her what's going on, so Matasha has to figure it all out for herself."--Page 4 of cover
Ig Kids 2021 295 pages

The black notebook

Modiano, Patrick
"A writer's notebook becomes the key that unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris. In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case--a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret. The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize-winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti. Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love"--
Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2016 131 pages

Shadows of sin: a Jessie Drake mystery

Krich, Rochelle Majer
One of the "top ten women who write superior crime fiction" (Charles Champlin, mystery reviewer for the "Los Angeles Times), Rochelle Krich propels her exceptional sleuth, LAPD homicide detective Jessie Drake, into a deadly maze of rage, revenge, and moral complexities in what is the award-winning author's most gripping and provocative novel to date. At first glance it appears to be a random multiple murder -- a prominent plastic surgeon and his nurse and receptionist shot dead in their plush Century City office. But to Jessie Drake, the savage nature of Dr. Ronald Bushnell's fatal wounds suggests a crime of intense passion...and bitter retribution.Following her suspicions, the conscience-driven detective takes her investigation to the core of the seemingly harmonious family life of the slain surgeon. On the surface, Bushnell had everything: respect, money, a palatial home, a loving wife and daughter. But there is a joker in the deck, Bushnell's foster son, Ethan Meissner -- a troubled young loner with dark periods in his history. And the boy hasn't been seen since the murders.Ethan's unexplained disappearance suggests that the runaway knows something; he may be a material witness in a triple homicide or a premeditated killer...or another victim. The search for the missing teenager takes Jessie across many volatile borders -- those between nations, between families, and the razor-thin one that separates love from hatred. But the truth lies somewhere in a harrowing past of tainted blood and horrific personal tragedy. The deeper Jessie ventures into this shadow world of cruelty and secrets, the more she is haunted by the echoes of a lost soul's unanswered cry for help...and by the mostheinous crime of all, in which the sins of the guilty are visited on the innocent.
William Morrow 2001 337 pages

Grave endings: a novel of suspense

Krich, Rochelle Majer
"Tuesday, February 17. 11: 40 a.m., Corner of Vermont Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. A robber approached the victim from behind and put a knife to her stomach. . . . " Stabbings, even fatal ones, are not uncommon in Los Angeles. But the stabbing death of Aggie Lasher-a vibrant young woman dedicated to helping others and, it seemed, deeply loved by everyone who knew her-was especially tragic. For almost six years she has been obsessed by the mystery of her best friend's murder: If she had been with Aggie, would the killer have chosen another victim? Will the killer ever be caught? When Molly's LAPD pal Detective Andy Connors shows her a locket found on the body of a dead man, suddenly the case seems solved. Molly had given that locket to Aggie. Still coiled inside it is the red-thread good-luck charm that Molly had brought back years ago from Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, a thread with the reputed mystical power to protect its wearer. The presumed murderer-a good-looking aspiring actor named Randy Creeley-was found dead of an overdose in his shabby Hollywood apartment. But Molly has unanswered questions. And though she should be focused on her wedding, only weeks away, she is driven to find out more-about Creeley; about his nervous sister, Trina; about his missing girlfriend, Doreen. About Aggie, who, it turns out, didn't tell her best friend everything. The more Molly discovers, the more she wonders: Was Aggie's life snuffed out so an addict could shoot up? Or has Creeley been framed? What if Aggie was deliberately murdered by someone else, someone who is ready to kill again to ensure that his motives stay buried with Aggie and Randy Creeley? Molly's search for the truthsends her scurrying for answers in an L.A. tourists seldom see. But closure is elusive, and seeking it can exact a stiff price-sometimes even a life. Rochelle Krich's third Molly Blume mystery is irresistible: an inexorably compelling chiller.
Ballantine Books 2004 367 pages

Murder in A major

Torgov, Morley
Take one of the crowning musical geniuses of mid-Nineteenth Century Europe; surround him with enemies, some of whom are fiercely jealous of his talent, others in love with his beautiful wife, add several scoundrels, including a kleptomaniac music critic who ends up murdered under highly mysterious circumstances and there you have the world of Robert and Clara Schumann in the Germany of the 1850s, as told by the narrator, Dusseldorf's top detective, Inspector Hermann Preiss.
RendezVous Crime 2008 236 pages

Love kills

Greenburg, Dan
"The attractive redhead at the A&P checkout counter opens her checkbook and begins writing a check, unaware that she's signing her own death warrant. The man behind her in the dark overcoat memorizes the address on her check. When she leaves the A&P, he follows her home. In the next few weeks he tracks her every move - and when she rebuffs his advances, he stabs her. Five women, chosen at random, fall victim to a man the press dubs the Hyena. The NYPD has no leads until young Babette Watson walks into homicide detective Max Segal's office. She tells him she's had disturbing visions of all the crimes before they happened. Dubious, Max takes a chance in believing the pretty psychic, and it isn't long before they're on the Hyena's trail. But the Hyena knows they're tracking him, and it won't be long before he strikes." -- Back cover
Thomas & Mercer 2013 338 pages

Fear itself

Greenburg, Dan
Why would a nurse's aide terrified of heights hurl herself from a twentieth story rooftop in Queens? Why would an attractive librarian with a water phobia be found naked and floating facedown in the Astoria Park swimming pool? How did the scantily clad body of a young bookstore clerk with a horror of snakes end up inside a Central Park Zoo cage with a two-hundred-pound python? NYPD Detective Max Segal, strung out from a devastating divorce, is determined to find the killer before more women die. A sadistic ex-con who masquerades as a shrink is seducing phobic women into psychic hell and literally scaring them to death. When Max Segal picks up the killer's trail, Max's new girlfriend is chosen to become victim number four. Like Love Kills and Exes , Dan Greenburg's previous bestselling thrillers, Fear Itself is a terrifyingly realistic, darkly humorous, startlingly sexy, street-tough page-turner with a surprising climax.
Thomas & Mercer 2013 385 pages

Caravaggio's angel

Brandon, Ruth
Dr Reggie Lee, newly arrived at the National Gallery, is putting together a small exhibition around three Caravaggios depicting 'St Cecilia and the Angel'. One is at the Getty, one at the Louvre, and she hopes it won't be too hard to track down the third. But a series of inexplicable obstacles keep getting in her way - and then, unexpectedly, a fourth Caravaggio turns up. One of them must be a fake. But which? When people start to die, it seems clear that someone doesn't want Reggie's show to go ahead. Why, she can't imagine. But her career is at stake, and she'd damned if she'll let herself be intimidated and bullied by these unseen forces. So Reggie investigates and her research takes her from Surrealist suicides to shady Italian art dealers, from seventeenth-century painting techniques to modern French politics in a viciously-fought Presidential election year. By the end it seems as though nobody in the opaque and ill-defined world of art can really stay incorruptible - perhaps not even Reggie herself.
Soho Constable 2008 272 pages

The paper chase

Symons, Julian
Crime-writer Charles Applegate decided to set his second novel in a progressive school. Taking a job at Bramley Hall to see what such a school was like 'from the inside, ' Applegate found to his dismay that he was expected to do rather more than just people-watch. And when a murder took place on his first night there, his skills as a detective writer were called upon as well. But real-life crime was to prove very different from its fictional counterpart...
House of Stratus 2001 233 pages

She lover of death

Akunin, B.
"When Masha Mironova alights in Moscow at the turn of the century, with a modest inheritance and a determination to shed her provincial Siberian upbringing, she becomes Columbine: reckless and daring-and with the dramatic outfits to prove it. In her quest for danger and passion, Columbine soon discovers the Lovers of Death-a small gathering of poets who conduct séances to determine death's next chosen lover. Once named at a séance, the chosen one must await three signs from death before taking their own life. The resulting string of suicides has taken Moscow by storm, becoming fodder for sensational media coverage and widespread hysteria. As the group's numbers steadily dwindle, a mysterious newcomer appears. Immediately recognizable to the reader as the inimitable Fandorin, the newest member begins to sow doubt and discord from within, in order to ward Moscow's youth away from the lure of suicide and expose the sinister deception at the group's core. But will the gentleman detective be able to stop Columbine from taking action when she receives her three unmistakable signs? She Lover of Death is a fantastically entertaining murder mystery, where the murderer's weapons of choice are trickery and psychological manipulation"--
The Mysterious Press 2020 263 pages

Just play dead

Gordon, Dan
In a huge Hawaiian mansion by the sea live Jack Wolfe, ruthless millionaire, and his knockout wife, ex-hooker Nora. Weary of their marriage, Nora seduces dim-bulb aging surfer Chad to kill her husband. But then it seems as if Jack wants Chad to kill him--or rather, he wants it to look like he was killed so he can avoid legal prosecution and begin a new life. So he offers Chad a better deal. Then it gets complicated: who are allies and who are conspirators is not known. It's all observed by Hawaiian Jewish detective Dani Kahana--also in love with Nora. This complicated tale ends explosively with a hilarious and unexpected close. Martin's Press.
St. Martin's 1999 240 pages

Tips for living: a novel of suspense

Shafransky, Renée
On the day Nora discovered that her husband, Hugh, had gotten another woman pregnant, she made a vow: I will come back to life no matter how long it takes-- It's taken Nora three years. With the help of her best friend, she fled New York City for a small resort town, snagged a job as the advice columnist for the local paper, and is cautiously letting a new man into her life. But when Hugh and his perfect new family move into a house nearby, Nora backslides. Coping with jealousy, humiliation, and resentment again is as hard as she feared. It's harder still when Hugh and his wife are shot to death in their home. If only Nora could account for the night of the murders. Unfortunately, her memories have gone as dark as her fantasies of revenge. But Nora's not the only one with a reason to kill--and as prime suspect in the crime, she'd better be able to prove it.
Lake Union Publishing 2018 319 pages

The Datchet diamonds

Marsh, Richard
Things aren't looking so good for Cyril Paxton. Hoping to earn enough money to finally marry his true love, Daisy Strong, Cyril invests his savings in the stock market, and loses it all. Ruined and on the brink of emigrating to flee his creditors, he reads with amusement a newspaper story telling of the brazen robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds, worth half a million pounds. But who can imagine his surprise when he returns home and finds, thanks to a luggage mix-up on the train, that he is in possession of the jewels! Cyril is at first elated at his change of fortune, but he may not be so lucky as it seems. Inspector John Ireland of Scotland Yard is hot on his trail, suspecting him of being the thief. And worse yet, the real thieves are after him as well. And when Paxton falls into their clutches, he'll face a difficult choice: give up the jewels, or risk brutal torture and certain death! Richard Marsh was a versatile writer of ghost stories, horror novels, and romances, as well as thrilling mysteries like The Datchet Diamonds (1898). First appearing in the wake of the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories, The Datchet Diamonds is one of the earliest modern detective novels. This edition reprints the unabridged text of the rare first edition and reproduces the original cover illustration from an early Victorian edition of the novel.
Valancourt Books 2007 140 pages

Still night in L.A.: a detective novel

Saroyan, Aram
"Michael Shepard, a detective with his own set of problems, is hired one morning by a fashionable young woman at her Hollywood apartment. Soon he's embroiled in a murder investigation that may shed light on a nearly forgotten tragedy. A divorced father wondering how to set his son on a better course in life, the detective gets into deepening trouble as he negotiates a vivid panorama of the town's modern-day beautiful and damned. Author Aram Saroyan harnesses the hardboiled styles of Chandler, Hammett, and Ross MacDonald into a contemporary tale of information age intrigue. The text is supplemented with cell phone photos taken by Saroyan in the same environs in which the story unfolds." --
Three Rooms Press 2015 149 pages