Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Modern Detectives

Dave Robicheaux had begun to put the pieces of his broken life together again when an old friend turned up on his doorstep, dredging up old memories and new threats.

Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block has been named a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. A Drop of the Hard Stuff continues Block’s popular series starring New York private detective and recovering alcoholic Matthew Scudder. Scudder is already struggling with his sobriety when his friend and fellow AA member Jack Ellery is found murdered. Now the only thing keeping Scudder from the bottle is his obsession with finding the culprit.

San Francisco, September 1921: Silent-screen comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle is throwing a wild party in his suite at the St. Francis Hotel-girls, jazz, bootleg hooch...and a dead actress named Virginia Rappe. The D.A. says it was Arbuckle who killed her—crushed her under his weight—and brings him up on manslaughter charges. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers stir up the public and demand a guilty verdict.

Florida private eye Doak Miller agreed to help the local cops by posing as a hit man to catch a woman looking to get rid of her husband. But then he met the wife - and fell, hard. Now he's plotting with her to commit a murder that could net them millions of dollars and the chance to be together. But to pull it off under the watchful eyes of the police, it'll have to be the perfect crime....

1955: Tampa, Florida, is a city pulsing with Sicilian and Cuban gangsters, cigar factories, sweet rum, and violence. The death of retired kingpin Charlie Wall—the White Shadow—has shocked the city, sending cops, reporters, and associates scrambling to find those responsible. As the trail winds through neighborhoods rich and poor, enmeshing the innocent and corrupt alike all the way down to the streets and casinos of Havana, an extraordinary story of revenge, honor, and greed emerges.

Aimee Leduc has her work cut out for her - running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bebe. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (French Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimee, something to do with Aimee's father's unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no?

Tempted out of his bookstore into the world of horseracing, Janeway accepts an invitation from wealthy horse trainer H.R. Geiger to travel to Idaho and look at some rare first-edition books. The books are stunning, flawless children's classics that render the usually eloquent Janeway speechless.

Tension runs high in this working-class neighborhood as a hunger strike to protest strict immigration laws escalates among the Algerian immigrants. Aimée barely escapes death in a car bombing in this tale of terrorism and greed in the shadows of Paris.

Erin McCabe has been referred the biggest case of her career. Four months ago, William E. Townsend, Jr., son of a New Jersey state senator, was found fatally stabbed in a rundown motel near Atlantic City. Sharise Barnes, a 19-year-old transgender prostitute, is in custody, and given the evidence against her, there seems little doubt of a guilty verdict. Erin knows that defending Sharise will blow her own private life wide open, and doubtless deepen her estrangement from her family. Yet as a trans woman, she feels uniquely qualified to help Sharise.

Over dinner in a Brooklyn restaurant, Marshall learns that his former NYPD colleague owes money - a lot of money - to the wrong people. But the conversation is cut short by gunfire, and, suddenly, Ray is lying dead on the restaurant floor. As Marshall investigates the murder, tracking down the drug dealers, bag men, bent cops and mob players within Ray’s orbit, it becomes clear there’s far more to the killing than just a debt. But who is responsible for Vialoux’s death…and why?

When an old acquaintance, finance magnate Eleanore Paget, hears August is back in town, she tries to hire him to investigate suspicious goings-on at her investment bank. August declines - detective work is no longer his beat. When Eleanore is found dead the next day of an apparent suicide, August doesn't buy it for a minute. His search for her killer will drag him into a rat's nest of Detroit's most dangerous criminals. 

Detective Jack Yu returns in a pulse-pounding fifth investigation in New York's Chinatown - can he save an old gangster friend from a ruthless killer? Chinatown gang leader "Lucky" Louie was shot outside of a Chinatown off track betting establishment on the 13th of January and lay in a coma for 88 days, waking on Easter Sunday. The number 88 is a double-helix double-lucky Chinese number; religion and superstition all lean Lucky's way. But Detective Jack Yu, Lucky's boyhood blood brother, fears his friend's luck is about to run out.

So this girl walks into a bar…and when she walks out there’s a man with her. She goes to bed with him, and she likes that part. Then she kills him, and she likes that even better. On her way out, she cleans out his wallet. She keeps moving, and has a new name for each change of address. She’s been doing this for a while, and she’s good at it. And then a chance remark gets her thinking of the men who got away, the lucky ones who survived a night with her.

In the weeks before hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics, the Montreal police are tightening security to prevent another catastrophe like the '72 games in Munich. But it isn't tight enough to stop nearly $3 million from being stolen in a bold daytime Brink's truck robbery. As the high-profile heist continues to baffle the police, Constable Eddie Dougherty gets a chance to prove his worth as a detective when he's assigned to assist the suburban Longueuil force in investigating the deaths of two teenagers returning from a rock concert across the Jacques Cartier Bridge.

Rene Beckman is a dishonored ex-cop with only two things on his mind: his new boat, the Triggerfish; and his hot date, an environmentalist named Vicki. When the two unknowingly dock the boat in the same secluded cove as a Mexican cartel's drug submarine, the date ends with a bang. With the cartel's coke-for-guns deal with local bikers torched by Beckman, he's forced to go on the run with half the underworld chasing him through the streets of Vancouver and the waters surrounding it.

A modern, Southern reinvention of The Maltese Falcon, Crossroad Blues won noir fans with its nod to the masters and thrilled readers with a wild ride along Highway 61. It’s here that we first meet Nick Travers, an ex-New Orleans Saint turned Tulane University blues historian. Nick searches for the lost recordings of 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson—and a missing colleague—and finds trouble at every turn.

Cops can make mistakes, even when they're not rookies. Deeply traumatized by a shooting incident, Cass Raines resigned from the Chicago PD, leaving one less female African-American on the force. Now she's the head of a one-woman private investigation agency. She also plays chess with the only father figure she's ever known, Father Ray Heaton. When Father Ray asks Cass to look into a recent spate of vandalism at his church, she readily agrees to handle the case. But only hours later she's horrified to discover his murdered body in the church confessional, a dead gangbanger sprawled out nearby.

In the 1950s, Ruby Walker boarded the Illinois Central from Mississippi to the Promised Land—Chicago. She became one of the greatest blues singers the city has ever known, only to lose everything when she was convicted of murdering her lover and producer, Billy Lyons, in 1959. She's been locked in a prison cell ever since. Now, a flickering hope emerges for Walker in the form of letters from a Tulane University blues historian named Nick Travers. She agrees to an interview only in exchange for him checking out what she calls the truth behind Lyons's last hours.

In the final scene of Cape Diamond, millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds went missing, which is where Ron Corbett’s latest novel begins. When rumors spread that they were buried on Mission Road, an old logging trail outside the town, people swarm to the area, setting up temporary camps and searching for fortune. But when a known murderer shows up, the real mystery begins.   

Sitting in cold cars for hours, serving lowlifes with summonses...being a PI means riding out a lot of slow patches. But sometimes the most familiar paths can lead straight to danger - like at Cass's go-to diner, where new delivery guy Jung Byson wants to enlist her expertise. Jung's friend, Tim Ayers, scion of a wealthy Chicago family, has been found dead, floating in Lake Michigan near his luxury boat. And Jung is convinced there's a murderer on the loose....