Showing results by publisher "Blackstone Audio, Inc." in Private Investigators

A torso in a suitcase looks like an impossible case, but Sean Duffy isn’t easily deterred, especially when his floundering love life leaves him in need of a distraction. So with detective constables McCrabban and McBride, he goes to work identifying the victim. The torso turns out to be all that’s left of an American tourist who once served in the U.S. military. What was he doing in Northern Ireland in the midst of the 1982 Troubles?

Colonial New Guinea, 1906: A small group of mostly German nudists lives an extreme back-to-nature existence on the remote island of Kabakon. Eating only coconuts and bananas, they purport to worship the sun. One of their members, Max Lutzow, has recently died, allegedly from malaria. But an autopsy on his body in the nearby capital of Herbertshöhe raises suspicions about foul play.

When journalist Lily Bigelow is found dead in the courtyard of Carrickfergus castle, it looks like a suicide. Yet there are a few things that bother Duffy just enough to keep the case file open, which is how he finds out that Bigelow was working on a devastating investigation of corruption and abuse at the highest levels of power in the UK and beyond. And so Duffy has two impossible problems on his desk: Who killed Lily Bigelow? And what were they trying to hide?

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.

It should have been a case like any other: a missing princess, a king willing to pay in gold for her return. But before he realizes it, private investigator Eddie LaCrosse, a slightly shopworn sword jockey with a talent for discretion and detection, is swept up in a web of mystery and deceit involving a brutally murdered royal heir, a queen accused of an unspeakable crime, and the tragic past he thought he'd left behind.

When wealthy and popular crusader and reformer Lester Pierce is gunned down in front of his Park Avenue residence, the public outcry forces the NYPD to restructure its homicide department. As the deceased was highly critical of Inspector Lionel Cramer, the longtime head of homicide is temporarily relieved of his badge. But it seems Cramer was not just a scapegoat. He was seen dining in Little Italy with mob kingpin Ralph Mars. If Cramer's provisional replacement, Captain George Rowcliff, becomes permanent, PI Nero Wolfe's future dealings with the force will be much compromised.

Lawrence Block's 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world - along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan). But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and it's all here, from a pair of late-'70s novelettes ("Out the Window" and "A Candle for the Bag Lady") through "By the Dawn's Early Light" (Edgar) and "The Merciful Angel of Death" (Shamus), all the way to "One Last Night at Grogan's", a moving and elegiac story never before published.

Sam Blackman is an angry man. A chief warrant officer in the criminal investigation detachment of the U.S. military, he lost a leg in Iraq and has been outspoken in his criticism of his medical treatment. Then, ex-marine and fellow amputee Tikima Robertson walks into his hospital room, hinting that she has an opportunity for Sam to use his investigative skills. But before she can return, Tikima is murdered.

The body in the arroyo belonged to a man who’d made his living plundering ancient Indian sites. And the only witness to the crime would not change his story: a demon had killed his friend. Sheriff Cliff Lansing has an unexplained death on his hands, and it’s only the beginning. In Las Palmas, New Mexico, a US senator is on his way to meet a Zuni shaman who is holding up a land swap involving 150,000 acres in New Mexico and Arizona. The senator intends to push the deal through. But in a long, dark night on the high desert, he is led into a storm of violence and shame.

Two American travelers have been killed—one with poison, the other with a knife through the heart—and the only clues at the scene are a woman’s wedding ring and the German word for “vengeance” written in blood. The military surgeon Dr. John Watson is brought in to investigate, along with his clever, arrogant new roommate, Sherlock Holmes.

When a renowned theater director senses something amiss during his latest production, he calls Nero Wolfe. Though the corpulent genius wouldn’t normally accept a job this vague, a mutual friend dangles the prospect of a very rare orchid in exchange for his services, and Wolfe can’t resist. With a mind to suss out useful backstage gossip, Wolfe turns to his faithful assistant, Archie Goodwin, to impersonate a journalist in order to speak to the cast. Though Goodwin’s conversations prove unfruitful, on his last day at the theater, the director is murdered in his sound-proof booth.

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.

Private detective Bill Smith is hurtled headlong into the most provocative - and personal - case of his career when he receives a chilling late-night phone call from the NYPD, who is holding his 15-year-old nephew Gary. But Gary escapes Bill's custody and disappears into the dark, unfamiliar streets. Bill and his partner, Lydia Chin, try to find the missing teen; their search takes them to a small town in New Jersey, where they discover that one of Gary's classmates was murdered.

Can the true identity of the Sherlock Holmes imposter be revealed at last? Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon are no stranger to mysteries. In the five years since they opened Carpenter and Quinncannon, Professional Detective Services, they have solved dozens, but one has eluded even them: Sherlock Holmes or, rather, the madman claiming his identity who keeps showing up with a frustrating - though admittedly useful - knack for solving difficult cases.

Together with his indefatigable partner, Brigadier Maione, Commissario Ricciardi, a man driven into solitude by his paranormal "gift" of seeing the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths - a talent that also makes him a highly effective investigator - is conducting an investigation into the death of the beautiful and mysterious duchess of Camparino. The duchess' connections to Neapolitan privileged social circles and the local Fascist elite make the case a powder keg waiting to blow.

When PI Lena Jones’ partner, Pima Indian Jimmy Sisiwan, is arrested in the remote town of Walapai Flats in northern Arizona, Lena closes the Desert Investigations office and rushes to his aid. What she finds is a town up in arms over a new uranium mine located only ten miles from the magnificent Grand Canyon.

When one of the beautiful Le sisters is killed, Hartford, Connecticut's small Vietnamese community is stunned. Mary Le Vu, wife of a poor grocery store owner, is gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Her twin sister insists that dutiful Mary wouldn't be caught dead in that drug-infested zone, but the police rule it an unlucky accident. Skeptics hire private eye Rick Van Lam to get to the truth.

In "The Naval Treaty", a classic Sherlock Holmes tale of treachery, murder, and theft, an innocent man's honor, position, and health are at stake when a treaty of the utmost importance is stolen from his office.

The Most Southern Place on Earth: That's what they call the Mississippi Delta. It's not a place Lydia Chin, an American-born Chinese private detective from Chinatown, New York City, ever thought she'd have reason to go. But when her mother tells her a cousin Lydia didn't know she had is in jail in Clarksdale, Mississippi - and that Lydia has to rush down south and get him out - Lydia finds herself rolling down Highway 61 with Bill Smith, her partner, behind the wheel.

John Lovering Benedict had more than most men - more money, more mansions, more cars, but most of all more women, including three ex-wives with little in common but their extraordinary physiques. For Ellery Queen the question was which one of them had bashed in Benedict's skull with a hunk of iron statuary? The clues were many…but puzzling. All had been planted at the scene of the crime, but by whom, and for what purpose? And who was the last woman in John Benedict's life?