Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Modern Detectives

The hooker was young, pretty...and dead, butchered in a Greenwich Village apartment. The prime suspect, a minister's son, was also dead, the victim of a jailhouse suicide. The case is closed, as far as the NYPD is concerned. Now the murdered prostitute's father wants it opened again--that's where Matthew Scudder comes in.

The good guys in a new African nation were missing a treasury full of diamonds. The nation's corrupt leader had stashed the rocks somewhere in New York City. Now the good guys needed a specialist to get their diamonds back. So they came to the best in the business: Parker. Only the three mysterious tough guys came to Parker, too. They figured three hands filled with .38s could convince him to pass up this international gem game. But leaning on Parker was like pressuring a box of TNT with a short fuse.

In Matt Scudder's mind, money, power, and position elevate nobody above morality or the law. Now the ex-cop and unlicensed PI has been hired to prove that socialite Richard Thurman orchestrated the brutal murder of his beautiful, pregnant wife. During Scudder's hard-drinking years, he left a piece of his soul on every seedy corner of the Big Apple. But this case is more depraved and more potentially devastating than anything he experienced while floundering in the urban depths.

Small-time stoolie Jake "The Spinner" Jablon made a lot of new enemies when he switched careers from informer to blackmailer. And the more "clients," he figured, the more money - and the more people eager to see him dead. So he's greedy but scared, and he turns to his old acquaintance Matthew Scudder, who used to pay him for information back in Scudder's days as a cop. Scudder's his insurance policy - if anything happens to "The Spinner," Scudder can check up on the people who wanted him dead. No one is too surprised when the pigeon is found floating in the East River....

The course of true love never did run smooth for PI Mike Hammer. His secretary and partner, Velda, has walked out on him without explanation, and Mike is just surfacing from a four-month bender. But then an old cop turns up murdered - a cop who once worked with Velda on the NYPD Vice Squad. What's more, Mike's pal, Captain Pat Chambers, has discovered that Velda is in Florida, now the moll of gangster and drug runner Nolly Quinn.

Battling the bottle one day at a time, ex-cop, sometime PI Matthew Scudder finds that next to staying sober, staying alive seems easy. But in the mean streets of New York City it never is. Not for the prostitute who wanted out and got her beautiful self slashed to ribbons. Not for a pimp named Chance who is betting his life that the broken-down detective can find her murderer. And not for Matthew Scudder - just trying to stay alive in a city that knows nothing better than how to die.

A deranged, derelict, crazed Vietnam vet has been arrested for gunning down successful young lawyer Glenn Holtzmann at a corner phone booth on 11th Avenue—and the suspect's brother wants unlicensed private investigator Matthew Scudder to prove the madman innocent. But Scudder's curiosity and dedication are leading him to dark, unexplored places in his own heart…and to passions and secrets that could destroy everything he loves. In this unmerciful metropolis, no one is truly innocent—including Matthew Scudder.

Matthew Scudder reminisces of his uniformed days and of the night he bent the law to help some "friends of a friend." When a friendly game of poker turns deadly, Scudder is called upon to solve the murder…and hide the body.

An ancient brotherhood meets annually in the back room of a swank Manhattan restaurant, a fraternity created in secret to celebrate life by celebrating its dead. But the past three decades have not been kind to the Club of 31. Matthew Scudder - ex-cop and ex-boozer - has known death in all its guises, which is why he has been asked to investigate a baffling thirty-year run of suicides and suspiciously random accidents that has thinned the ranks of this very select group of gentlemen.

Matthew Scudder investigates the brutal murder of a woman known as the “bag lady.” A seemingly homeless woman, she turns out to have distributed her substantial wealth in a complex will naming random strangers. Where did the money come from? Why was she living in such reduced circumstances? And why in the world did she choose these beneficiaries—the owner of a local newspaper stand, a neighbor she rarely spoke to, the detective himself—when her real friends and acquaintances got nothing at all? And how is all this linked to her murder?

Private investigator Mike Hammer and the beautiful Velda go on vacation to a small beach town on Long Island after wrapping up the Williams case from I, the Jury. Walking along the boardwalk, they witness a brutal beating at the hands of some vicious local cops - and Hammer wades in to defend the victim.

Private eye Mike Hammer is no stranger to murder, but this time he has two to untangle - the killing of the Captain, a legless, homeless panhandler, dismissed by the police as minor, and the slaying of gambling kingpin Marty Wellman, whose lady friend, Helen Venn, turns to the P.I. for help when the Mob fingers her for the next kill. Seems the new kingpin, Carmen Rich - with whom Hammer has a violent history - thinks Helen made off with ten mil in skim money courtesy of her late lover, or anyway, so Rich claims.

Mike Hammer is a popular guy. At least with certain people. Several failed assassination attempts have got him riled, so apart from preventing the kidnapping of a famous New York socialite, he's hell-bent on figuring out who wants him dead...someone who's desperate for the kill of his life.

Matthew Scudder is about to face every cop's worst nightmare: James Leo Motley, psychopath extraordinaire. Twelve years ago Matthew Scudder lied to a jury to put James Leo Motley behind bars. Now the ingenious psychopath is free, and the alcoholic ex-cop turned private investigator must pay dearly for his sins. Friends and former lovers - even strangers unfortunate enough to share Scudder's name - are turning up dead because a vengeful maniac is determined not to rest until he's driven his nemesis back to the bottle…and then to the boneyard.

After a night out with friends, Matthew Scudder is reminded of an enigmatic case he had while still working as uniformed policeman. The case in question involves the suicide of a devout Catholic man in front of his wife and children... or was it a murder?

When Miami homicide detective Hoke Moseley receives an unexplained order to let his beard grow, he doesn't think much about it. He hastoo much going on at home, especially with a man he helped convict ten years before moving in across the street. Hoke immediately assumes the worst, andc onsidering he has his former partner, her newborn, and his two teenage daughters living with him, he doesn't like the situation one bit.

Matthew Scudder gets hired by a fellow bar patron to prove his innocence. Salesman Tommy Tillary is a 45-year-old philanderer with a Manhattan girlfriend and a Brooklyn wife. So when Tommy becomes a suspect in the murder of his wife, it's up to Matt to find the real killer.

This is a city that seduces dreamers - then eats their dreams. Matthew Scudder understands the futility of his search for a longtime missing Midwestern innocent who wanted to be an actress in the vast meat-grinder called New York City. But her frantic father heard that Scudder is the best, and now the ex-cop turned private investigator is scouring the hell called Hell's Kitchen looking for anything that might resemble a lead. And in this neighborhood of the lost, he's finding love - and death - in the worst possible places.

Matthew Scudder, his wife, Elaine, Mick Ballou, and Mick's new wife sit around a table in Mick's Hell's Kitchen saloon for one last night of stories before the building is transferred to its new owners.

Jerry Broadfield thinks he's a good cop. But now he's been charged with extortion - and his former buddies in the NYPD would like to see him laid out on a morgue slab for squealing to a committee on police corruption. Suddenly, he's got a lot of enemies, and when a dead call girl turns up in his apartment, his troubles get even bigger. Broadfield screams "setup," but nobody believes him - except ex-policeman, now unlicensed PI Matthew Scudder. Because Broadfield turned traitor no cop is going to give Scudder any help with this investigation, so Scudder's on his own.