Showing results by publisher "Wordwooze Publishing" in Modern Detectives

Here is a time when the old west became new - the 1930s-50s - as Louis L'Amour witnessed it first-hand in Southern California before and after World War II. Many people think the age of gunmen, scheming land barons, murderous bad guys, and the determined men who stood up against them, went out with the end of the Old West around the 1890s. But, in L’Amour’s own time in the New West, there were far more bad men toting guns and making grabs for far more wealth and valuable land than in the fabled days of the Old West.

Ryan Morgan, a married man, comes to Banning in a panic. He is being blackmailed with incriminating photos of Ryan with an attractive coworker. To Banning, with years of experience as a private eye, there is nothing unusual about that. What is unusual is that the photos show the pair in places where they have never been.

The head of one of the largest investment banking and securities firms in the United States has been assassinated in Times Square in the middle of New York City’s annual celebration of Halloween, the Festival of the Dead. Louis Martelli, NYPD, is one of the first detectives on the scene.

Barker, the mysterious homeless detective with no memory of his past, returns in the wild, third installment of the Barker Mysteries. Sequestered in a thrown-together shack beneath the soggy planks of California’s Old Fisherman’s Wharf, Barker and his gaggle of street dogs have kept largely to themselves since the events of Monterey Pulp.

One frightened blonde, eight chorus girls, a singer and three strippers... Hundreds of rancorous Reenactors itching to fight the Civil War all over again... Harry Horne hot on the trail of a stolen million somewhere on the battlefield.... A dozen big-city mobsters with .45s in Civil War regalia hot on Harry’s trail... It’s a recipe for excitement, sex, and lots of action.

Mike Lanson was the ace crime reporter for the Gazette, so it was natural that he heard about the kookie wino who had reported eavesdropping on two men plotting a murder. So, it was also natural that he got on the case after one of the two plotters was found dead. Mike, like all reporters, was looking for an answer. But when he filled in the five W's on the next victim, he came up with this: Who: Mike Lanson. What: His own murder. When: As soon as that fire reached the explosives. Where: In a deserted storehouse. Why: Because he knew too much.

Following hot on the heels of his rescue of Carmel's mayor from the ship Wicked Joe in Monterey Noir, Barker once again finds himself in a hot mess of danger and intrigue. From an encounter with the disturbing Easter Bunny Man at Pacific Grove's famous Lover's Point to a diabolical plot by the homeless denizens of Deadrent Kingdom, trouble is never very far from Barker and his collection of loyal canines. And mystery has a way of following this strange man who deliberately chooses to live in the margins of society.

Morocco Jones challenges the Mafia in a-kill-or-be-killed novel of murder, molls, and mayhem. The Syndicate made a big mistake when they murdered Chris Shane because Shane was the man who had saved Morocco from torture and death at the hand of a despot's most savage secret agent back in Eastern Europe during the war - his best friend and the man to whom he owed his life. No bunch of gun-happy gorillas could scare a guy like Morocco.

A crime reporter investigates the case of the deadly do-gooder! While Mike Lanson, reporter for the Gazette, was checking up on Clarence Proost, director of the Anti-Vice League, Proost was slain. There was a strip-tease dancer named Luzy who thought that "maybe" she murdered him. The police thought so too, but Mike didn't so he helped her hide out, hoping for the bigger story to break. All the gangsters in town didn't care who killed whom, all they wanted were the blackmail files Luzy had in hiding with her.

A homeless hero with the crime-solving skills of Sherlock Holmes. Not every hero lives in a mansion or works from a smoky, hard-boiled office. Enter Barker, a mysterious man with no memory of his past. Ferociously handsome and acutely observant, Barker makes his home under the soggy planks of Old Fisherman's Wharf along California's foggy Central Coast. His closest friends are an assortment of stray dogs, ranging from a large Rottweiler to a tiny Shih-Tzu, who live with him. Adventure and intrigue have an uncanny knack for crossing Barker's path.

Freelance reporter and sometime private detective Nick Bancroft is tough enough when he has to be. But he can be soft for the ladies. That's how he ends up at an outdoor band concert with Maggie - a librarian, divorcee, and his very talented lover - and is on hand to witness the murder of the very well-connected private secretary of a very important political figure.

A hot-tempered, very neglected Mafia wife. Her 18-year-old lover in a black leather jacket with switchblade. Her missing "Made Man" husband who had been playing fast and loose with pay-offs collected for the local Capo de Capos. A dozen juvenile delinquents who were ready to rumble and just as ready to harmonize when record producers dropped by. Two tough-as-nails cops convinced that Harry Horne was guilty of everything. And a young woman with a penchant for shedding her clothes and trying to shoot Harry. It all adds up to one of journalist/sleuth Harry Horne's craziest cases.

When reporter Nick Bancroft's protégé, Bobby Scalf, is found murdered with a large spike in his head, Nick, while trying to find out who killed the boy and the reason why, discovers a conspiracy that includes the town council, the school board, the police chief, and the local newspaper publisher. He survives several attempts on his life and that of his stormy lover to nail the killer and expose the town's secrets.

McHugh's back, drunk, and locked deep in a Mexican jail while the clock ticks down to doomsday! Someone is planning an international incident that would set off a revolution in one of the US's closest South of the border allies, plus provoke a shooting war between the US and Mexico - and it's up to McHugh, the two-fisted secret agent who always travels with a briefcase containing a fifth of Scotch and a .45, to stop it.

When Vicki Fowler's body is found covered with bee stings in a Central Illinois pasture, the sheriff calls her death an accident. Freelance reporter and private detective Nick Bancroft doesn't believe it. He learns the victim lived in a home for young unwed mothers who work as waitresses and whores at a local nightclub.

A young woman with a sex etiquette book in her lap is found dead at a high school football stadium. Freelance reporter and novice PI Nick Bancroft is hired by the girl’s father Ramsey Sinclair to find the killer and gets kicked around by various suspects as he pursues the killer and the story. His work is interrupted when he begins a love affair with receptionist Maggie Atley.

In the first audiobook in this classic series, a former CIA spy behind the German lines in WW2 and secret agent fighting the Russian KGB in Europe during the Cold War, returns to the states to find himself up against the dirtiest plot ever against the U.S. Russia's top secret agent has infiltrated the country, making an unholy deal with the Mafia, for an unlimited supply of heroin, the Mafia agrees to back all Reds' activities in the United States. The streets will be flooded with smack...and the back alleys with Russian agents working to bring down America.

He can out shoot, out think, out fight, and out love any other secret agent on the planet - get out of the way James Bond before your tux gets rumpled! McHugh lands a Caribbean island assignment: Stir up a revolution, topple the world's most brutal dictator, smash the secret police whose methods start with torture and get a lot worse from there, help the revolutionaries, and stop the revolution before it goes too far in the other direction. It's just another days' work for McHugh.

When a sexy nudist hires him to protect her from whoever is threatening her life, Nick Bancroft becomes the target. Someone tries to burn him alive, beats the hell out of him, and, since that didn't run him off, uses him for target practice. Meanwhile, two people are murdered, Nick's true love, Maggie Atley, is more than somewhat perturbed by his relationship with his client, and a mysterious club seems to hold the answer. Nick survives another losing season by his beloved Chicago Cubs, a vicious attack by a couple of huge dogs, and eventually puts the finger on the bad guys.

Gil Vine is the quick-thinking, compassionate chief security officer at the fashionable Plaza Royale Hotel. While investigating a routine disturbance complaint in the Tower apartments, Gil finds himself enmeshed in a deadly struggle for control of a fabulous fortune in oil. As always in the Gil Vine mysteries, life behind the scenes of a large hotel is painted for the listener in fascinating detail. Vine is at his best in this installment of the series as the hotel detective does his best to protect the Plaza Royale's reputation and also stop the series of murders.